29th August 2011

I ran away from home when I was younger, but not necessarily in a traditional sense. I was 20 years old. When I realized that I really wasn’t the “southern belle” material, college material, or husband material, I didn’t know what to do with myself after high school, so I went to get a job a year later in 1980. I went to the Harris County Personnel Board.  The only job they had open was records clerk. How hard was that? I knew my alphabet. I applied and was rewarded accordingly a whole $989.00 per month. That was a lot of money for my first job! (Especially in 1980)

(For those of you who knew me then, relax. I am only using first names (three fake first names) except for my BFF and I (those are real.)  

This was a fascinating job from 11pm at night until 7am in the morning. I had never done this type of work. It took some getting accustomed to. I was soon promoted to 2^nd shift which was 3pm to 11pm after about 4 months. My job was to record court documents, check for outstanding wants/warrants, and verify all information whether a person could or could not be let out of jail from the Sheriff’s office. Another duty was to answer the phone. In the office next to us was the verification clerk for the actual warrant and her name was Donna.

Donna was this blunt, married red head that ran that office on the 2^nd shift.  She knew her stuff and taught me a lot about warrants and identifiers. Of course, the very nice finger print officers taught me also a lot about identifiers as well. One day, Donna and I were talking. She was breaking up with her husband and asked if I knew anyone looking for a room-mate. (ME!) We moved into to a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment (very sheik) and newly built off of Greenspoint Road in north Houston.  The rent was $300.00 a month.  My life began. I will not tell everything, but I will tell this story.

Donna and my job had expanded to hand delivery of active country warrants to Houston Police Department and to various sub-stations. We did this very well. Sometimes we were called the Dynamic Duo.  Donna had a cool car. She had a real life “Smoky and the Bandit” Trans-Am, t-tops, bird design on the hood, loud sound system, fully loaded. It was so cool my mother went a purchased one. But it was a “plain Jane” with no fancy detailing or t-tops. Sometimes, after work, really late at night, about 3am, she and I would get in both cars on I-45 and drag race. The Shepherd sub-station knew about this because they would often get involved just for the fun of it to break up their boredom. One night was really eventful that I recall.

We had just dropped off some warrants at the Shepherd sub-station when we ran into some of our Houston Police Department finest at a gas station called “O’Neal’s.” It was on the corner of Airline and Little York. It was where everyone who was anyone stopped by nightly. Peg O’Neal was the owner. He knew everything and said nothing about anything. In about 1981, he must have been at least 70 years old and still going strong. He moved like a really old sea turtle, was armed with a pistol and worked all night long every night that I can remember except Sundays. He once told me working all night long was the only way he and the wife stayed married for so very long.

When we saw our two friends up at the gas station, it was about 2:30am and I had a few drinks too many. Of course Donna was driving. (She could drive too.) We exchanged a few obscenities at each other and the race was on. They had bet us $10.00 they could beat Donna in her car against the special package police cruiser. We raced and followed them, gained the lead. Then they followed us a while and gained the lead. This went on for about 30 minutes. They (the police officers) wanted to be funny and shut off their headlights. Because they weren’t paying attention to where they were doing, we watched them hit a culvert and wreck the police cruiser. Everyone was ok, but not knowing the extent of the damage, they “boys” slowly drove the car back to Peg O’Neal’s while we followed.  They pulled around front and we pulled around back, drove into one of the bays, and closed the door. Another friend (officer), Randy, had just pulled up also. Donna and I were in the back room of O’Neal’s about to die laughing so hard and half numb from what had just happened.

Meanwhile, a police dispatch just went out on the radio from the wrecked unit. “This is unit number so-and-so, we are in pursuit of a red Camera, please stand by….disregard, we just hit something in the road. We have stopped pursuit, mechanical malfunction and we are on our way to O’Neal’s – will be advised.”  Of course that radio dispatch didn’t help but make us laugh even harder.  A few minutes later, Randy came walking in and told us, “Ladies you have two choices; shut up or get the hell out of here and never speak of this again. The supervisor is on his way.”  We shut up. We weren’t going to miss this for hell or high water! We knew the supervisor also.

The story was told about the “almost pursuit” and the supervisor stood there looking at the two police officers. We stayed in the back room with Randy (whose cruiser was out of sight as well.) We heard everything that was told. We dared not make a sound. The supervisor called for a tow truck. The axle was broken. He looked at the two patrolmen and said, “You better tell that story more convincingly than what you just did. I will accept it in written form as being fact.”  He shook his head and walked off.

What a night. I still talk to Randy. Occasionally, Donna and I will bring up that night and laugh about it still. I never thought I would write about this but what the heck. All involved have retired. Donna and I do not work in the field anymore. It was just one great memory in the Texas night.