"Way back story"s early 1960s Rob Bean Sr. sent me a note about way back when we were teens an my note back. Out of all the good cops we had asigned at times to our little part of the Grove,that dipshit Reagan was the only ass. He had given me a ticket for dim tail lights on my full custom Henry J! What BS. The night he pulled his gun on all of us in total panic at Rob Bean's house;;We were Peter Kurschner,,Rob Bean Sr.,,Nick Chinetti, me , and one or two others, just sitting in your front yard about 11;30 pm or so sat.., Officer Reagan pulls his cop car up an stops by your curb,facing wrong side of road. Has us come over to his car by your side walk. Tells us to get the hell home,you JD can't be running your gang around this late ! ***** Nick Chinetti turned out was standing in grass between side walk an curb,but on a red ant pile ' so jumps around an takes off his shoe to get the red ants out,an bangs it on the bumper of the cop car!! LOL, Mr Asshole Cop thinks he is being attacted,jumps out of car with gun out an pointed at all of us! Your Mom by then came out of house an tells Cop to get off our block. Not too long after that,I was mowing my lawn,I lived very close to end of Deadend Bridge not really hook to island, an could see it from my yard. The gates were open to bridge'I had cut the lock off yet again a few day before. I see our Asshole cop drive his cop car out on bridge to harass those's just fishing or swimming at the Island end. So I see his cop car drive out of site over hump in bridge. I stopped mowing for a min. an go get a old padalock,close the briidge gate an lock it. Go back to mowing my lawn,with a eye to the bridge now an then. After some time,cop car comes back to land end,but gate is lock an can't get off bridge. Cop tries his tire iron to brake lock,that didn't work,he points his gun at it,but did not fire{ I guess he didn't want paperwork about why he fired. Likely same reason he dose not call on his radio for help. So he tries to climes the gate an fence{ it has barbwire along the top,plus the crazy old guy in our neighborhood,who also hated the gate open,had wiped roof bull on the wire to try an keep kids from climing it. But the Cop makes it over ,with tar an rips in unaform. See me mowing lawn,comes over ,cussing up a storm,an ask if I had a hacksaw. I say I'll see,an go in house,I find one,but takes me a few min. too find a used up bad saw blade and put in it. Take that out an let him have it. Not even a thank you !!!! Took him over one hour to cut the lock with that. LOL.
I imagine that most who owned modified cars in their youth had run-ins with the PoPo at some point.... In 1968 I owned a '58 Ranch Wagon with a built 352/3.03 'big' toploader three speed, 3.56 rear gears. The 352 was leaned on pretty well for the era; 10:1 compression, solid cam out of a 427, dual-point distributor, aluminum intake off a 428 PI. Would run on Chevron Supreme, but liked the White pump better. As a broke high-school kid when I built it, all the speed goodies were bought used. This was a project, being driven between mods after I got the motor in. I got the body for free, but the PO had used body parts from multiple cars, as well as never buying the same color primer twice, so appearance left something to be desired before I had it painted. Also obnoxiously loud... LOL. Somehow I caught the eye of the local state patrolman... LOL. That guy pulled me over every time he saw me and for some ridiculous things. 1. Excessive noise. OK, this one was true. Now I had a full exhaust with mufflers, but straight-though glass-packs on the end of the head pipes with 4' slash-cut straight pipes exiting in front of the rear wheels wasn't the quietest solution... I was asked at the drags one night what kind of headers I had... LOLOL.. The guy didn't believe me until he looked under the car. 2. Failure to have my license plates securely installed. I'd pulled the bumpers/trim in preparation to having the car painted and wired them on... not good enough for him. He forgot about the lack of a license plate light... LOL. 3. Incorrect color turn signals. This was '68, and many new cars featured amber front turns. I dug out my model paint and painted my lenses. He felt mine were 'too orange'... 4. Incorrect license plates. This one is my favorite... I decided the car would look cool with blacked-out side windows behind the doors. Window tint was years away, so I painted them on the inside with black paint. Couldn't see though 'em at all (my various dates parents didn't like this either...LOL). He pulls me over and tells me I need truck plates because without transparent side windows, it was now technically a sedan delivery. When I pointed out it had a functional rear seat he was not happy... These are the high points. He pulled me over many other times for chickenshit reasons (example, the car had four taillights, if only one was out he'd pull me over), sometimes for no reason at all. Thinking back, he was probably checking for a suspended license, which I never had. Then he disappeared... I found out later he'd harassed some other kid whose parents had some HP in the local establishment and he got transferred to middle-of-nowhereville in eastern Washington... LOLOL Interestingly enough, I never got a moving violation in that car, not one. Lots of 'defective equipment' tickets though. I got pretty familiar with the finer points of Washington DMV rules. I also figured out that painting a obnoxiously loud car bright fire-engine red wasn't a good idea either; he may have been gone, but the red attracted more than a few of his compatriots... Didn't own another red car for 40 years until I bought my avatar, and now I have two...
LOL;;Nope,not anything wrong really with my tail lights,just that cop being his Ahole self. He also gave me a ticket for speeding when I didn't,I took too court and won ,by luck him not showing up. He did same stuff to many other teen drivers of anything he though was a hot rod or custom,as well.. My buddy,Steve,who got a ticket from him for going too slow with his 31A/stock 4banger,,,on US 1. I know Steve put up a fishline across the road with a bag full of cat crap on it,when Cop drove by,pulled line from in the woods, so bag was at windshield hight,splat! not far from his coffee stop. Yes ,we kind of knew the rout he drove around. Also were he stopped for coffee nearly ever night.< "The Golden Point" One night we were at the Golden Point seated in the patio on the side ,all talking Cokes an FF,Cop Reagan comes in,but no parking left open up front. So he parks behind the patio. As he pass us,said If I see you lettering,I'm going to fine you ! And goes out front to order his coffee. As soon as he's out of site,the four of us with tooth picks,jams his cop car tire air valves open. Slow hisss. We load up in Tim's car an go around the block ,an in too back of gas station one vacant lot away,park in the dark were we can see the back of Golden Point. After a little time Officer Reagan,comes back to his car,takes no note at all of his car is a little lower do to now four flats,the ground behind patio were he parked is weeds anyway. He gets in,an started to drive off,floop floop floop floop,stops gets out looks around car finding out he has four flats an starts looking around real hard. He can't see us at all,but we're LOL with hand over our mouths*from our hide about 800+feet away. Now you need to understand,the other cops all knew he was a ass,an talking with them a few times. found out they ribbed him about ,his getting payback from some of those he messed with. So no way Reagan going to call for help from Motor pool for four flat tires= There would be a report an he's be ribbed about that big. We didn't stay to find out how long it took him to get car on 4 full tires again. So we told one of the good guy Cops,what we had seen,not that we did it or anything,,he LOL an even said thanks. A week later Officer Reagan ask ,when we all were all together parked in the back row of Hot Shoppie's."Hay you guys,I'm going EZ from now on ! Really". We didn't see Reagan again after that night,one of the good guy cops said he'd been move to Up-town*/colored side of down town Miami.
In 1969 when I was 19, I had a purple metal flake 57 Pontiac Safari Wagon with a tripower 389 and a 4 speed. It had a hood scoop and 2 glass packs on each side welded together. I was driving down Lake Street in Minneapolis and in the center lane at a stop light. A cop walks out from the curb to my car and tells me to rev it up. So I just blipped the pedal a little. He says do it again, harder. So I blipped it again. He then said floor it, so I did and the 3 two's kicked in making one hell of a racket. The cop says you loose pullover. Just then I see my friend open the glove box and throw a bag of weed he had in his pocket into the glove box. The cop was busy giving another guy a ticket so I had to stand there in front of my car until he was finished. I pulled my drivers license out of my pocket but I was so nervous about the weed in the glove box my hand was shaking like a leaf. I decided to toss my license on the hood of my car so the cop wouldn't see me shaking. The license slid across the just waxed hood and went right down the hood scoop. When the cop turned around he found me with the hood open and me fishing around for my license between the carbs. He asked me what I was doing and I smiled and said "looking for my drivers license officer." He ended up giving me a loud muffler ticket, after measuring my bumper height, which just passed by 1/2". Some cops are just don't get it.
Most everyone has a Barney Fife type cop story from their youth, though I believe the vast majority of officers are good people doing a tough job. In our neighborhood his nickname was Herbie, he went out of his way to harass us kids, in retrospect we probably had it coming. Examples, with my 57 Chevy 1964, 72 hour tickets I recall, no front bumper, no hood, loud exhaust, headlight height, street slicks, (they were recaps, dot approved), Girls garter hanging from rearview mirror, some of these more than once. In Milwaukee Wisconsin 60's a 72 hour ticket procedure was, you correct issue, take it to cop shop, they inspect, ticket gone. On one of my inspections the officer stated that he had better things to do with his time than checking all the kids cars in the neighborhood constantly, asked me nicely if I would please comply to some the rules. He stated Herbie will never let up on us kids, then he talked about Herbie, Herbie's daughter was killed in a street racing accident a few years back and was on a mission to eliminate street racing/cruising. After this conversation I left the hood on (showed off my tri-power 348 enough) put on turbo mufflers, lowered front to be within headlight height. Shortly after this I traded car away and didn't run across Herbie until a few years later when I had my kustom 60 Ford ragtop, he ticketed me for front nerf bars instead of bumper, so he was still on his mission, But I now understood where he was coming from. He was right as the street racing had blossomed to very dangerous level, peaked around 69/70 and every police force in area was making big efforts to stop it. I left the "Scene" in 1970 on a Judge's recommendation, I then went to open wheel dirt track racing, Midgets, finished up in Wing Sprint Cars, a Great 21 year adventure, Another set of stories/ memories, Priceless.
When I was in high school, I was out cruising in my VW with a friend, and got pulled over for a taillight being out. We knew each other as I went to school with his daughter, so he was pretty good about it. Well, that night he had a rookie woman police officer with him, and he suddenly stopped talking and made a waving motion. We looked back to see that she had her gun drawn...scary! He just told us to go home and fix the taillight. There were stories/incidents about her that got around, and she wasn't with the police department very long.
Hello, In my first 1940 Ford sedan delivery, it was painted a Salmon Pink. The original owner painted it red, in his late night plastic covered car port. When we saw the 40 sedan delivery coming into the parking lot of the local drive-in restaurant, it looked Red. But upon closer scrutiny, it did not look Red as we all know Red. It was a lighter color under the old parking lot lighting scheme. The owner insisted it was Red. It did not matter to me, as I was in the market for a station wagon or as this 40 sedan delivery rolled up, THIS ONE. For me, the color was fine, but it was the sound of the Chevy 348 motor that played a big time in me offering something for his sedan delivery. He said no, and then we saw him for the next three weekends, doing the same Friday-Saturday night cruise. When the sedan delivery finally was sitting in my backyard parking space, the color was looking great. The single taillight was bright and noticeable. (Red on red/salmon pink) The big 348 was gone, replaced by a 80 hp Flathead motor. But, it was my first car purchase. Jnaki Jump up many years later and the original sedan delivery was sold prior to going away to college. But after college, my wife and I purchased another 1940 Ford Sedan Delivery that was actually painted Red. Now, I did get pulled over for a low light taillight while coming home one night from a late afternoon photo shoot. The nice policeman said that he had a hard time seeing the running light. I asked if he could see the brake light. He said that part was ok, but the running light was barely showing. I asked nicely if the Red single lens on a Red body had anything to do with the dimness. He said yes, but that I should either install another Red lens on the other side of the rear door or get a brighter running light. I guess this guy was an old hot rodder as he did not give me fix it ticket, but some suggestions, before moving away. similar sample After talking to several friends, they suggested a brighter bulb, but they had eyes for a blue bulb taillight. A lot of guys were putting them on their own hot rods and the blue light gave off a brighter glow that was unusually brighter. So, we were on the hunt for NOS versions. Yes, I know they were police attracting taillights, but they sure were going to look cool with one on each side of the rear door area. Then time ran out and a new addition came into our family, causing us to sell the 40 Ford Sedan Delivery.
The Jalopy Journal
