[lumberjim]

At night, we had to leave the underpass parking spot, so we decided to park and sleep in a nearby subway station parking lot one night. It was raining it’s ass off, so we draped a tarp over the raised hatch doors of the van and Tony’s pick up truck. There were some friends from home along for the weekend shows, and all eight of us in the two vehicles. One of our friends from home, Dan, who was Gina’s on again off again boyfriend, had come up and met us after he went to the show. Heather had scored a nugget of Kindbud from a head named Darcy, and we were smoking it in Dan’s ceramic dry bong. I had not had any pot for a couple of weeks due to budgetary constraints, and the first hit I took almost made my lungs collapse. I was in the back of the van and, as I said it was raining really hard. Out the window of the van, I see two police cars coming down the street toward the lot we’re in. One of them turns in to the first entrance, and the second loops around to the opposite side. Uh oh. I reacted. I jumped out of the van (visualizing the scene from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and hoping the rain would obscure the cloud of pot smoke that must have come out with me) and trotted over to the cop’s car with a big smile and a friendly look.
“Hi! Is it alright if we park here overnight?” I said
The cop looked me over ( I was dressed like a circus performer, I’m sure) chuckled, and said, “ I don’t have any problem with it, but your on the transit Cop’s turf, and it’s their call. We were called about the odor of marijuana emanating from the area. You know anything about that?”
“Well, yeah, there was a white Subaru parked right over there when we got here a few minutes ago, and it was smellin’ pretty skunky” I said.
The cop didn’t want to get out of his car, I could tell. “ How was the show?” he asked.
“Oh, we didn’t get in. Our tickets are for tomorrow night, but we had hoped to get in tonight too.”
The cop mumbled something in his CB and the other car started to roll away. “Ok, you kids be careful, and have fun tomorrow”

Whew. What an adrenaline rush that was. From that point forward, during this tour, I was encumbered with the title of “PR Man” and the responsibilities that came with it. I learned to be the one to approach authority and seek approval for something that it was within that particular authority figure’s power to grant, and guide the conversation away from whatever I was trying to slip by them. I felt like if we were upfront and nice, and polite, the Cop was more at ease and less suspicious. There were several close calls like that narrowly averted search of our vehicle, and subsequent arrest on drug charges. Man, when I think about how close we came how many times, I can’t believe it.