How Can You Laugh at a Time Like This? is a Dream Machine Site The Dream Machine --- The Imagination of the World Wide Web

Twice before, during the opening salvos in the War on Drugs, I have been a victim of lousy intelligence, both times by the authorities. The first time, when we were just beginning to live communally during the late sixties, a whole houseful of us were arrested for marijuana sales because a 13 year old grade schooler had been caught selling pot in school and said that he had bought it from us. To this day, I am not sure that the kid actually volunteered that information or the police "urged" him a bit. In any case, we did not sell or give this kid any drugs (although we were in fact using marijuana) or even know who he was. The charges were dropped.

The second time was more serious. A secret agent (David Richardson), now a high official in the DEA, induced me to participate in a scheme to manufacture LSD acting on false information that he had that I was a drug chemist. In fact, I was working as a mathematical psychologist in a research institute and have always been quite bad at chemistry (it was my worst subject in high school). However, I WAS, as a leader in the Hippie Commune "movement," actively promoting the use of LSD, so his intelligence was only a little bit wrong, I guess. Anyway, to make a long story short, when I tried to back out of the deal, threatening to call the cops, they arrested me, charged me with "contributing to the distribution of LSD" (the Timothy Leary law), which is equivalent to sales although involving only words, no actual transfer of drugs or money. When a U.S. Attorney warned my attorney that the agents were prepared to lie under oath on the stand that I was a member of the Cosa Nostra, I fled and became a fugitive fo r two and a half years. When I surrendered, during Watergate, I plea bargained a five year probation in return for my not making it a political trial. When sentencing arrived, however, the judge threw out the written agreement and sentenced me to eighteen months in the Federal Penitentiary at McNeil island. There, the authorities played a an additional little prank on me. They placed me in an eight man cell with seven of the most dangerous men on the island and spread the word through the population that I was an undercover FBI agent sent to spy on the drug traffic at the prison (there was a LOT of it!). Needless to say, this led me into several harrowing adventures that I may talk about in this column some day.

However, last Tuesday evening, I underwent one of the scariest events of my entire life, bar none. Below is a description I wrote down the very next morning:

Last evening, as we were preparing for bed, I went out to our front room to start a computer backup...a routine I go through every evening just at bedtime. As I was rebooting one of our computers, I heard the front door open. Sticking my head into the front hallway (I was buck naked), I was confronted with three individuals wearing Halloween masks pointing hand guns at me. Two of the handguns had red laser sights on them. You know, the type that shine a beam of light on their target. Startled, I yelped and jumped back into the room, but they quickly followed me and, while all three pointed guns at me, one of them ordered me to go back into the bedroom and lie down. My wife, Gypsy, was already in bed, so I lay down beside her, face up. One of the gunmen had followed us, and now centered the red beam right between my eyes, holding the gun about two feet away from my face. He kept repeating, "Just lie down and don't move." My first thought was that we were being executed and I was scared silly. Within ten seconds, however, I realized that there was little I could do about it if true, and there was really no reason anyone would have for doing that (My writing isn't THAT bad!). Then, the gunman spoke again, this time asking, with urgency, "Where's the money?!" Actually relieved that they were looking for money, I tried to point to my fanny pack, lying alongside the bed, which contained my wallet (with about $90 in it), he hit my hand and shouted, "Don't move, don't point...just tell me where it is." When he got my wallet, he said, "Where is the REAL money?" We directed him to Gypsy's purse, but that was all there was, a total of a little over one hundred dollars. After a few minutes...although it seemed like hours...they slipped back out the front door. We waited only a few seconds before Gypsy ran upstairs both to check on our son, Roger, who had just gone upstairs to bed himself when the incident began, and to call the cops. While the home invaders were there, after we had calmed our fears about our own safety, we both were terrified that Roger would hear the ruckus and come bursting in on the scene, but the intruders had been quite quiet and Roger had heard only their entrance and thought only that it was a rare late evening guest. The police arrived within only a few minutes after the 911 call, and the dispatcher helpfully stayed on the line until they got here. Seven or eight of them showed up, heavily armed. The one who spoke with us, who was very good, by the way, answering all our questions and asking the right "detective" type questions of us, reasoned that they had either simply stumbled upon our house (we always leave the doors unlocked since there is always someone home) or had mistaken it for a drug house. Both explanations were a bit illogical. The first because the temperature was nearly zero outside and the latter because we live in a solid middle class residential neighborhood with no apparent drug activity. On the other hand, we have no better explanation of why three men with expensive handguns would risk a life threatening breakin for a hundred dollars!

Afterward, we both experienced much the same thought train.

Q: "Should we move out of the city?"
A: "To where?"

Q: "Should we get a gun?"
A: "What good would it have done?"

Q: "Does this change my mind about gun control (against)?"
A: "No."

Also, both of us were curiously calm afterward. We found ourselves to be neither angry nor frightened (both of which we experienced after a burglary several years ago), but rather glad to be alive and to have suffered such small losses. We had a hard time getting to sleep, but here it is morning and nothing has changed...so it goes.

Subsequent evenings were less blissful. During the lighted hours everything seems "normal." However, at night the fear and anxiety return, especially at the time the previous incident occurred. It will some time, if ever, I am afraid, before we can go back to leaving our doors unlocked ("Who is going to come in while we're here?"). And, our fears for our own safety are nothing compared to our fears for our children and grandchildren.

Anyway, we learned the hard way that cops are not the only ones who fuck up their "intelligence" in the Drug War. Why did we ever think otherwise?

Talk to you later...

If you buy them from here, we get a kickback!

The Dream Machine --- Network Services

...the best independent ISP in the Twin Cities

A newspaper near you.