Police Call

This page last updated on 01/26/2019.

Rick and I were hanging around his parent's house when his younger brother, John, and side-kick, Tom Weir, strode in. "Guess what we're gonna do!," they chimed. Uhhh...golly, I can't guess. "We're gonna paint Stella's Elevator!" No kidding?! Wow, that's cool...and so began in the month of May, the year of our Lord 1982 what is commonly referred to as the "Police Call" incident.

There isn't much for high school graduating Seniors, such as John and Tom, to do in Walla Walla. Your only option is to create your own excitement...the stodgier citizens refer to this as mayhem. One popular form a Senior excitement was to paint some profound slogan such as "Class of '82 rules!" on a big grain elevator. The elevator of choice was known as "Stella's Elevator" after a girl in my graduating class of '81, but that's a different story. Anyway, this grain elevator, situated East of Dixie at the intersection of highway 12 and Lewis Peak Road was clearly visible to all highway travelers. As such, it was ideally located to spread the word of a new breed of Seniors destine to revolutionize the world.

We asked John and Tom about their plan. They explained the whole thing...the whens, whys, and wherefores of it all. We had the whole story! Well that's just super, we wish you well. It was Wednesday and they planned to work their mischief Friday evening, after dark of course. Rick and I looked at each other for a few minutes thinking. Hmmmm...Friday night eh? You know, we could go out there and do something to them on Friday...wouldn't that be funny. We though about dressing up like a sasquatch, making weird noises, and stalking around. Nah, they'd know it was us. Hmmmm. Well, we couldn't think of anything clever, so we decided to regroup on Friday at Rick's house to re-assess our options.

After dinner on Friday, I trekked to Rick's house. John and Tom were there, getting their spray paint cans, rope, etc. ready. Rick and I watched them pack up and depart just before sunset. We still hadn't come up with a plan to foil them yet. We were stumped. We sat around for a while. Rick said it would be funny to call the police and have a cruiser drive by. Man, would they freak out! Heh, heh...yeah... Rick's Dad owned a Buick Electra; the woolly mammoth of sedans. It looked just like a police cruiser in the dark. I got an idea; maybe we could get a bunch of boxes and tape them together to look like a rack of lights. We could put them on the Electra and in the dark, it might fool them. We got a bunch of boxes, taped them together, and placed them on the Electra. They looked GREAT! Rick grabbed his spotlight out of the boat and our preparations were complete. We clambered into the car and headed for Stella's Elevator.

By the time we got there, it was dark. We pulled off the side of the highway a few hundred yards from the elevator and waited. After about 20 minutes, we thought we saw someone walking around...that was our cue. We lashed the cereal boxes to the top of the Electra. Rick drove while I operated the spotlight. At first we just drove by very slowly and saw two figures scrambling for cover. Rick turned around and I snapped on the spotlight. He made another slow pass while I swept the beam to and fro over the crime scene. There was a railroad siding next to the elevator with a few boxcars parked there. I saw some legs scrambling frantically on the other side. Heh, heh...it was working. Rick and I were delighted. We turned to go up Walker Road and panned the spotlight over the field in back of the elevator. A lone figure, looking like John, jumped to his feet and ran off over the hill, out into the field. We made a couple more passes, then departed. Haw, haw, haw...Rick and I really yukked it up! We returned to Rick's house to await the vandals' return.

After a couple of hours, John and Tom stumbled in. "How'd it go?," we queried. "...mumble...fine mumble...ok I mumble...," they trailed off. "Well, did you paint Stella's Elevator?," we asked. "Nah, a cop drove by and almost got us," Tom exclaimed. "Yeah, I wonder how they knew we'd be out there...did you guys call the cops on us?," John asked. "Oh no, no, we wouldn't do that," we said truthfully. John and Tom seemed troubled by the incident and Rick and I were reluctant to confess. They looked genuinely irked that their plan had been foiled. Finally, almost a month later, Rick spilled the beans. Even after a whole month, John and Tom were kind of mad at us. I don't know whether they ever forgave us for that incident or not, but it sure was memorable for Rick and I. Heh, heh, heh...