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posted Oct. 16, 2009
Reckless Driving
by John Merriam
I: THE CHASE
“Pull over, boy!” Two cops glared menacingly from the passenger window of their cruiser at the motorcycle rider to their right. Both vehicles were stopped at a traffic light on Pacific Avenue. The driver of the car pointed to a loading zone in front of University Hospital. The cops sported insignia from the University of Washington and were driving a blue Plymouth Fury III. Johnny Horizon was astride his Norton P-11 motorcycle. Pacific Avenue was maintained by the City of Seattle, outside the jurisdiction of U.W. police. Johnny wasn’t about to let campus cops give him orders when he was on city property.
The P-11, a bastard child of the merger between the Norton and Matchless motorcycle companies in England a few years before, was designed as a dirt racer for contests like those in Baja, California. For starts off the line it was one of the fastest production motorcycles in the world. In 1971, Japanese engineers were catching up quickly when it came to top-end speed, but they had yet to produce anything that could compete with the Europeans for acceleration from a dead stop. The P-11 had so much torque that, given traction, it could climb a brick wall. Even if the squad car had a supercharged V-8, it was no match for the Norton. Johnny decided to ignore the cop’s directive to pull over.
Johnny Horizon was a draft-dodging freshman at the University of Washington. He’d never intended to go to college, until he went to Saigon as a crewmember of a merchant ship and saw what was going on in Viet Nam. He started college at the U.W. just after various malcontents, also holding student deferments, had taken over the campus to disrupt ROTC recruiting and other activities related to the war. In a ‘them and us’ atmosphere, the length of Johnny’s hair made him a target for guardians of the Establishment like the two cops trying to pull him over.
Johnny assumed that the officers wanted to talk because he’d left campus without paying for parking. In fact, he had never once paid for parking during his attendance at the U.W. To park a motorcycle cost 25 cents for all day. Johnny felt that was outrageous—especially since bicycles got to park for free. To avoid the parking fee, collected upon exit from, rather than entry to campus, his preferred route involved an elaborate series of maneuvers starting on a pedestrian path off Stevens Way and ending with a brief wrong-way jag on a connecting road to the eastbound lanes of Pacific Avenue. It was just after he had emerged from this last stretch that the cops pulled up.
Johnny looked to his left and thumbed his nose at the campus cops. Not waiting for the light to turn green, he eased out the clutch, twisted the throttle, and left some rubber on the road in his rapid departure. The cop behind the wheel knee-jerked the accelerator to the floor. The chase was on!
It was not a fair race. By the time the P-11 approached the Montlake Bridge it was traveling at almost triple the speed limit, while the Plymouth was still busy cutting off cars on Pacific Avenue.
Johnny was not concerned about the traffic jam he encountered. Southbound cars were backed up over the bridge he needed to cross to get home. He simply eased off the throttle, feathered the brakes and coasted between lanes of stopped cars at 50 m.p.h. The squad car hadn’t even reached the traffic jam.
Johnny relaxed; it was no contest. Assuming he had ditched the cops on the congested bridge, he leisurely pulled into a left-turn lane on Montlake, bound for East Hamlin street. Waiting to turn, he looked into the rear-view mirror and gasped. The squad car was fishtailing in the northbound lanes, swerving to avoid oncoming traffic.
‘Wow!’ Johnny thought. ‘Those idiots are going to kill someone. They must take that parking fee seriously.’ The cop car was still accelerating on the bridge and looked totally out of control. ‘I’ll ditch those bozos once and for all.’ He mentally laid out an escape route through the U.W. Arboretum that would thwart all chance of pursuit.
The squad car managed to get across the bridge without a collision. The Plymouth was only a block away from the P-11 and approaching fast. Johnny suppressed his amazement and let out the clutch. His plan was to go left on East Hamlin to 24th Avenue East. There was a road divider on 24th, about eight inches high, blocking access to the Museum of History and Industry parking lot. The space was wide enough for two wheels but not four. The P-11 could pass through that gap at high speed but, if the Plymouth followed, jumping the divider would destroy its suspension if not rupture the oil pan. The way the cops were driving, it would blow out all their tires as well.
If the divider didn’t work, Johnny had some other ideas. After the Museum of History and Industry, on the other side of Lake Washington Boulevard, a tortuous route through alleys led to a footbridge into the Arboretum. Located at the dead-end for East Lynn street, the footbridge was too narrow to be traversed by car. Johnny relished the thought of the chase lasting that long. ‘If these clowns keep this up,’ he thought, ‘they’ll blow up their V-8 cruiser when it hits the rock sides of that overpass.’ Johnny felt it his duty to prove, once more, that even a supercharged Plymouth had no business trying to catch a P-11 anywhere this side of the Bonneville Salt Flats.
The squad car was getting dangerously close. The motorcycle bolted left towards East Hamlin, cutting off an oncoming pick-up truck in the process.
BANG! Johnny heard a noise like a small caliber gunshot from the direction of his front forks. It was followed by the sound of metal clanging on metal with each rotation of the front wheel. The P-11 was wobbling badly as it entered East Hamlin. Johnny looked down at his front wheel, where the brake was creating sound effects. Normally the front brake is stationary, so the fixed pads can slow wheel rotation when the rider squeezes the brake handle in front of the right handlebar grip. Now the entire brake apparatus was instead spinning in tandem with the front wheel. The lever on the brake drum, that activated pressure for the brake pads, was also rotating with the wheel and—like a club whirled by demons—destroyed everything it contacted. The cable connecting the front brake to the handlebar had snapped in the process.
Damage was extensive. The brake lever had knocked out such a large chunk of metal that the right fork had broken and collapsed on itself; thus the wobble. The front suspension was shot. Only the rear brake remained operative.
Johnny was dismayed. He had recently adjusted clearances for the front brakes and thought: ‘How could the brake shoes have seized on the drum? It must be defective design.’ He cursed out loud: “Goddam English engineers!” He knew that Norton hadn’t changed its basic engine design since before World War II and concluded the factory consultants were all senile.
Even without front suspension, Johnny felt he could still ditch the badge-punks with the escape route he had in mind. The P-11 was still moving, but it was screaming in agony. He decided to quit the chase. His motorcycle was more important than a minor traffic ticket, after all. He pulled over to the side of East Hamlin.
Still traveling at an unreasonable rate of speed, the U.W. squad car careened around the corner and screeched to a halt behind the P-11. Two of the U.W.’s finest emerged with guns drawn. Their hands were shaking. Johnny got nervous. He realized he could easily be shot for the quarter he owed.
“Howdy, sir.” Johnny greeted the cop whose hand was shaking the most.
“Freeze!”
“What’s the problem?”
“You’re under arrest!” The officer’s index finger was quivering on the trigger. The would-be cops obviously assumed they’d just collared a member of some major Mafia family. Why would they want to arrest him for a parking violation?
“What’s the charge?”
“Reckless driving.”
“Reckless driving?! I thought you guys were from the U.W. We’re on a city street. How can you charge me with reckless driving when you never saw me on campus?”
“Hot pursuit.”
Johnny didn’t know what “hot pursuit” meant. He did know the U.W. cops had guns and he didn’t. “Hey you guys, I live just a few blocks from here. If you put me in jail I’ll miss my classes. Do you want me to lose my draft deferment?” He showed them his driver’s license. The two officers themselves looked like they were still of draft age. Holstering their guns, they wrote Johnny a citation for reckless driving and let him go. Johnny pushed the P-11 back to his house.
A few days later, Johnny
bought a new tube for the front fork, along with a brake cable, to replace
the destroyed parts on his P-11. The cost of the brake components was
several times—to powers of ten—the 25 cents he’d saved on parking
the day of the chase. He never figured out why asbestos brake shoes
froze on the metal brake drum.
II: THE CONSEQUENCES
Johnny Horizon wondered how to deal with the ticket he received for reckless driving—a criminal traffic violation that could result in jail time. He had to post $200, in lieu of bail, when he went to the Public Safety Building to get a court date. He didn’t understand how it was legal to get charged by campus cops for reckless driving on city property. He went to the law school library for the University of Washington and tried to find out.
According to the law books, the cops could indeed charge him with reckless driving if they exaggerated a bit about what they saw him do on campus. The Seattle Municipal Code classified reckless driving as a gross misdemeanor, rather than a traffic violation, punishable by up to a year in jail.
Johnny went to see a friend who lived in the Magnolia district of Seattle. Willie Maybee had been hauled into court so many times that he considered himself an expert on the traffic code.
“All you have to do is say you panicked. If you show that there was no intent to drive recklessly, you’ll win. Then all they can get you on is negligent driving.” Willie was giving him terrible advice, but Johnny didn’t know it at the time.
Johnny also didn’t know that the possibility of jail time automatically entitled him to a public defender. The day of the trial he cockily sauntered into Seattle Municipal Court, confident in acting as his own lawyer.
The driver of the squad car, the one who’d almost shot Johnny, testified first. He embellished Johnny’s misdeeds outrageously. The cop claimed to have actually caught the Norton, ignoring the fact that Johnny pulled over voluntarily. His description of the apprehension concluded with: “The defendant acted in a very cavalier manner.”
Johnny’s testimony was short and to the point: “I panicked and didn’t know what I was doing.”
The judge hearing the case, who was later to become a senator in the state legislature, was not impressed. “Guilty, “ she announced after approximately three seconds of deliberation. She directed Johnny to the pre-sentencing unit to set a date for an “evaluation” before sentencing.
Several days later, Johnny showed up for his pre-sentencing interview. The woman volunteer conducting what she called an “investigation” was young, overweight, and very gullible.
“Why did you drive recklessly?” Johnny told her he’d had an LSD flashback. “Wow! Some of my friends have told me about having flashbacks. It must have been really scary. . .?”
“It was.” Johnny played it for all it was worth. “When I saw those blue lights on the police car, I freaked out. I was flashing on the time that a friend almost got killed in the tunnel on Highway 10 to Mercer Island. The only thing I could do was get away from those lights as fast as I could. “
“You poor thing.” The woman gave him a glowing pre-sentencing report.
Johnny’s sentencing was not scheduled until April, the day after spring break was over. After bullshitting his way through final exams, Johnny used spring vacation to visit a woman in California named Laura who’d picked him up hitchhiking the year before.
On his way south he collected a sheaf of speeding tickets. But once he’d left Washington, Johnny wasn’t concerned about accumulating citations from jurisdictions outside his home state. He used the tickets to start his campfires at night.
Johnny left California behind schedule and was worried about being late for court. He rode the Norton even faster on his return trip north, outrunning police in both California and Oregon. He drove recklessly so he wouldn’t miss his sentencing for driving recklessly.
In his haste, Johnny had neglected routine maintenance for his motorcycle. North of Portland, just before crossing the Columbia River, he was going 85 m.p.h. when he heard a muffled explosion beneath him, followed by sounds of metal grinding on metal. Behind the motorcycle stretched a long, constant sheet of blue flame from the right exhaust pipe, looking as though the P-11 had turned into a large propane torch. He looked at the engine. Most of the casing covering the primary drive was gone. The motorcycle would never make it to Seattle in that condition.
Johnny discovered the source of the problem after he pulled over. The motorcycle had run dry on oil. He had a quart of Castrol in his pack, enough to allow the P-11 to limp to Vancouver, Washington. There he made a distress call to a friend in Seattle who owned a VW van. He and the P-11 were carried back to Seattle. Johnny made it to court on time.
The judge sentenced Johnny to community service, suspended his license, and fined him six dollars in court costs. Thanks to the pre-sentence report, after miscellaneous charges $184.00 of his bail would be refunded upon completion of the community service.
“Hot shit; no jail time!”
Johnny suppressed his exuberance, making sure the judge did not hear.
He wasn’t worried about his license being suspended, figuring he could
get another one in a different name.
III: THE SEQUEL
After he was convicted of reckless driving, Johnny Horizon pondered the best way to perform several hours of “community service” that was part of his sentence. He approached court personnel and got approval to work for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Johnny was enrolled in a class called “Courts and Civil Liberties” that spring quarter at the University of Washington. He got his professor to agree that Johnny should receive credit hours for his ‘volunteer’ work at the ACLU. ‘Best to kill two birds with one stone,’ Johnny philosophized.
Most of his work for the ACLU consisted of being the solo staffer at the office for the Seattle city chapter, a small room above Gilly’s Sub shop in the University District. The ACLU also wanted him to act as “parade marshal” on occasion. By ACLU definition, a “parade” meant anti-war demonstrators blocking various arterials. A “marshal”, by the same token, was a person assigned to monitor overzealous crowd control techniques used by the Seattle Police—of which there were plenty. Johnny’s “community service” function was to obtain badge numbers and to be available as a witness in police brutality lawsuits that the ACLU was bringing against cops.
On his first stint as a parade marshal, Johnny suffered a failure of nerve. He was in the middle of a noisy and disrespectful crowd blocking the entrance to the Seafirst Building on Fourth and Madison. The concerned citizens, most of whom were barely old enough to vote, ignored the order to disperse that blared out from police bullhorns. The Tactical Squad for the SPD charged the crowd, waving billy clubs in such an unfriendly manner that Johnny jumped over the wall to Spring Street and ran away.
Sprinting north on Fourth Avenue, he rationalized that the ACLU would surely want to save his services for another ‘parade’. ‘There is a fine line between dedication to duty and stupidity,’ he thought. As Johnny watched the rout from a safe distance, he realized he’d been in so much of a hurry that he hadn’t written down a single badge number.
While paying his debt to society, Johnny was also trying to fix his P-11. Running out of oil when traveling at high speed had melted the right piston onto the cylinder sleeve and burned a hole in the top of the piston crown. He also had to replace the primary drive cover since most of it had exploded onto the side of the road. He needed more parts than he could afford.
After fulfilling his service, to at least part of the community, he was refunded his bail. That was enough money to buy the parts he needed but not enough to pay a repair shop. He rented tools and rebuilt the engine himself. The work was far from perfect. Even though it ran again, Johnny knew the P-11 was on borrowed time.
Johnny got a driver’s license in a fake name so he could keep driving the P-11. He started taking chemistry classes at the UW to learn how to synthesize cocaine in his basement. It didn’t work. The decision to take chemistry classes contributed to the loss of his student deferment because of low grades. Johnny received a notice to report for an induction physical at the Selective Service building on Elliott Avenue—later to become the dog pound. He reported for his induction physical shortly before Christmas 1971, and was classified 4F. That’s another story . . ..
After Johnny beat the draft,
he dropped out of school, got a job and started saving his money. He
bought a brand new Norton Commando 750 Roadster that went even faster
than the P-11.
John Merriam
is a lawyer practicing in Seattle who represents commercial fishermen
and other seamen on wage and injury claims. “Thirty-Five Cents,”
another adventure of Johnny Horizon—the frugal scofflaw 1970s motorcyclist—can
be found on page 14 of www.wafreepress.org/92/