JAN-A-5
THE NEW YEAR’S VISIT WITH DONALD AND THE
GAINESVILLE GEELHOEDS,
AND THE NEW YEAR’S EVE “GPD RIDE-ALONG”
WITH MY SON CPL DONALD GEELHOED; THE NEW YEAR’S FOOTBALL GAMES WITH THE TRIUMPH
OF THE BIG TEN –
AND MOST PARTICULARLY UM OVER UF—
AND AN ABRUPT DEPARTURE BY RENTAL CAR FROM
GAINESVILLE TO JACKSONVILLE, ENROUTE WITH THE SUPPLIES TO FERNANDINO BEACH
FOR THE LUCY FERGUSON LAUNCH TO CUMBERLAND
ISLAND
January 3, 2003
I have arrived in Jacksonville, and am camped in the Days Inn at the JAX airport, where I have had a big buffet dinner with Rich Reinert, as we had a few years back in preparation for our trip, and then we went out to box up two grocery carts full of supplies at Wal-Mart to stock up for the seven hunters and one weekend guest who will finally be sorted out from the mix of cancellations and modifications of the troops I had hoped to have down here. The Three Gibbses are not going to be here, neither of the Elwells will, Don King and Gene Curletti are not going to be around, and Donald, despite our fondest hopes will not, and—surprise!---the Denver team of Reg and Gene will, albeit late.
THE VISIT WITH DONALD
AND OUR NEW YEAR’S EVE “RIDE-ALONG”
I had arrived in Jacksonville airport to be recognized by Jennifer from the pictures she had seen of me on the web page. We got in her car and started the drive to Gainesville, without a good idea how to do that directly. I patterned the trip on the GPS which I had marked last year with a map and found that the way to do that with least confusion was to go out I 10 and down I 75 until I recognized and exit opposite High Springs. This we did and I found my way by feel in the dark, largely by the landmarks I remember from running.
Donald was already in bed, and had remarked that the “watch dogs” that crowd the house had not noticed my presence on intrusion. One of the dogs is new, a big and ungainly Great Dane pup named Shadow, since the previous Great Dane, a dog that arrived not by Donald’s choosing, the one with the long undocked tail that wagged everything off every shelf, had been hit by a car, and after last minute veterinary struggles, had died. This was somewhat a relief for Donald, since Wily and Simba are already dogs enough, and he refused to get a replacement Great Dane, but Kathy went out and got this large Great Dane pup Shadow immediately, a major addition to the livestock of the household.
In addition, Kathy had worked with someone whose daughter allegedly reported that she had been molested by her father, so an immediate divorce and move out was complicated by the fact of the horse that was owned in their original house. That was no problem—we’ll take care of the horse. So, Donald had to install a great deal of fencing and rearranging of the back yard and now a boarding horse is standing back there, allegedly cared for by the daughter of the friend of Kathy’s and here boyfriend, who are supposed to be training the horse to pull a carriage. So, the live stock of the household are proliferating, from this large size down to the “fire belly toads” which are frogs in a amphibious terrarium which need to be fed live crickets bought at the pet store.
Jennifer got a cup of coffee, and described how she had to go to work the next morning to make up for the time she would be going out on the Mindanao Mission with me, and for her help, I suggested she might like to go over to the Cumberland Island weekend the way the Gibbs sons and, I thought, Donald, Kathy and the kids would be doing also, in the pre-hunt family time. She accepted. All the others backed out. So, the long arranged deal to have the non-hunter families enjoy the beauties of Cumberland Island and the great accommodations of Nancy’s Fancy have, once again, foundered, on the cancellations of the moment after the long range plans were ignored.
Paul Gibbs called in the morning to say that he would have to cancel, since he had bad sinusitis, and had failed multiple drug treatment courses, and had made an appointment with an ENT doctor on Monday in hoping to have his problem treated surgically. Rich Reinert called regularly, telling me that he had heard that Reg and Gene were actually coming despite the absence of any response by Reg to all of my calls and emails, so he had Reg call me directly at Donald’s house. When he finally did call, he, once again, thought it would be a really great idea to have his sister Margo and her husband Doug, who live in Fernandino Beach or near it, to come over for the weekend and they would be able to pick me up in Gainesville to carry me up, since now the Gibbses would not be able to do so. Craig Schaefer and his two younger drivers, David and Sage might be able to come down to Gainesville to pick me up, but they would be taking off late on Friday, and that would take them until after midnight, so that they would not be able to see me until Saturday morning, too late to have me go out for the grocery shopping, etc. So, until the last minute notice, the option to have Margo and Doug fetch me sounded rather good as a way to get from Gainesville to Fernandino Beach. This last minute change caused considerable disruption and an outburst of hostility later.
When Donald packed up the uniform and the brand new Crown Victoria Gainesville squad car, and got ready for our early New Year’s Eve dinner at the Schrameks with the kids, I was supposed to be ready for the next step for our night together, so I packed up the camera and tape recorder, and the light vest for the “Ride Along” for which I had been pre-registered, and needed only the clearance of the last minute driver’s license check to see that I had no criminal record and that there were no warrants out for my arrest. We had steaks on the grille at the Schrameks house, and the kids prepared for their overnight at Grandma’s house as they said goodbye to Grandpa Glenn and their Daddy, and off we went to the GPD, where I seem to have passed my criminal check.
I waited through report with several of the fellows recognizing me from the last ride along I had done three years ago, the first and only time I had done this, and with a colleague of Donald’s named Bill, who had talked with me about turkey hunting. I met him at three AM later that same night. We listened to the report, and razzed the Beau Brummels of the plainclothes detectives who had come in after the other uniformed officers had all sat in on the briefing. I realized two things immediately: Donald, at twelve years on the force (a number that seems to be the first thing anyone describes in the police officer’s life, as they are all marking time until the twenty years to retirement) was one of only two corporals in the briefing of about thirty plus officers. Second, was that Donald is among the most respected and liked fellows on the force, since almost every one of the officers came to me and said what a privilege it was to meet the father of one of their finest policemen in Gainesville. There seems a fair amount of esprit in the group, and it seems that the PM shift covers each other well. I turned around to recognize David Schramek, Kathy’s brother, in the back row, the only “dog man” on the shift, so that he does not have a regular beat but goes only to hot calls for arrests or barricaded or hostage situations—a rather cushy duty without the boredom and report writing that makes up most of the average officer’s shift. That part is the most overwhelming component I see, is the waste of a lot of very good manpower standing around doing nothing by political restraint of this force, or simply making a “police presence.”
There would be two things that would make this night special. First, it was New Year’s Eve. That meant that near midnight, each police car was urged to get under a reinforced concrete overhang, like an overpass, since there would be a number of guns firing up in the air and those bullets would eventually be coming down, and they did not want them making holes in new police cars or their drivers. Second, there was a big rainstorm coming in, and that it was anticipated that there would be a lot of weather related problems, so much that the big downtown party (among the more miniature “Times’ Square” New York mimics) was cancelled for the storm prediction.
With the briefing complete, the group was dispersed after I met the woman who is a lieutenant on the shift and Donald’s favorite lieutenant back on the desk at HQ, both of whom told me how high they are on Donald’s performance. We fanned out, and almost immediately got two things happening, a call for a peeping tom and the start of the predicted rain.
We were rushing to the scene of the reported peeping incident, with lights on and running red lights when a dispatch call seemed to indicate that someone else was sent to the first call we had heard. We came to find a young and scared Puerto Rican woman who was a newcomer nurse, arriving to get a job in labor and dlievery, who had just moved in and was emerging from changing her clothes to see a man at her window. Donald and I went out to check the window, and found nothing unusual there, just as the rain started for serious. We completed the report and assurance of the young woman, and went off to cruise down Newbury Road. We had just seen a large branch that had fallen on a side road, which by the time we got there, the civilians in the neighborhood had already picked it up and dragged it to the side. WE turned on Newbury Road when we both saw the tremendous flash and crash of a large lightening strike with a blue green haze in the air indicating a transformer fire. As we turned down the Newbury Road, we saw the traffic lights out at a major intersection with everything black and wet in the night as people were trying to drive through the intersection carefully; as others were oblivious, racing down Newbury Road as thought they had not seen any inconvenience to themselves might affect other people. Turning on the light bar and pulling to the side of the intersection, Donald pulled on his orange raincoat and a reflective vest and grabbed his heavy duty flashlight, and walked out into the traffic melee, and said “Ah, well, many years of college, and now your son is a traffic cop!” He waltzed and blew his whistle and gave explicit instructions to motorists, many of whom still chose to ignore that someone was standing in front of them. One Japanese woman tried to go around him. “Stop! Put it in Park! Do what you got to do, but do NOT GO!” Donald yelled. She rolled own her window in the rain, presumably to tell him to get out of her way, but the languages were not compatible. This went on for several hours as Donald’s feet got wet, and the motorists were still slow to learn.
At about the second hour a fellow tapped on my passenger side window. There stood a kid holding a bicycle, with water spots all over his glasses, and looking like Harry Potter on his way to a picnic. “I would like to report a street crossing light that is out!” he told me, and pointed to the black corner where he had been waiting for the sign to turn green to let him cross. I said “Look around as far as you can see; do you see any evidence of artificial illumination anywhere at all? All the power is out along Newbury Road and that policeman right there will direct you as to when to cross.” He stood quietly in the rain, waiting for Donald to personally escort him across the street, when most of the cars had thinned out.
We came up to Applebee’s, a restaurant chain I had taken Donald to early in his stay in Gainesville that I had once owned a piece of in the national chain, and there went in to wait for two other officers, his brother-in-law Dave (who carries a portable TV set in his Ford Explorer police SUV in which his fellow officer Votan rides) and the senior corporal on the night shift. We talked about and had the special for dinner, which was my treat—a bit more than the police usually have to pay to frequent such establishments.
We got a call from a woman with a Haitian French name that Donald recognized as working for the child custody protective services. We came to her apartment, and she wanted to report a breaking and entering that had happened two months before, but wanted to get the police report before the end of the year to claim it on her taxes for 2002. She had a camera delivered at her door and the door was opened with the camera gone (replaced by Best Buy anyway) but a set of CDs taken. And here we are on New Year’s Eve writing a report for the scheming of some advantage taker in the system—well that sounds about right!
The magic moment came and went without our noticing it as anything special except that we noted the rain let up and the sound of gunfire increased. We investigated a few of these that were called in, but mostly just cruised slowly around where these events had been happening, saying hello to loitering groups of kids, who were not aware that I did understand the language they used.. We ran to another call or two before we were called off by the dispatcher reporting the complaint was withdrawn or another officer was on the scene. There seemed a lot of redundancy, over-reporting, and down time. The highly technologic environment was not apparent in the ballpoint and carbon copy environment of the police reporting, which is field by being driven to the HQ and dropped in the lieutenant’s inbox—hardly the rapid computerized check you would expect for a police force which should have mobile stations with laptops in every car wired to HQ. At least it gave me a chance to banter with the upper officers, and let them know that Donald was rather high on my list as well when they each reported being delighted to meet “Mister Geelhoed, whom they were proud to know because of his son Donald.”
WE pulled over a couple of cars who had not had their lights turned on, or made wrong turns, but no tickets were issued. As we cruised down the street where the “Planetary Way” was marked alongside the road in a deeply wooded area, we saw a car serve top the far side of the road. Donald made a U-turn and gave chase with the flashing lights, and the car pulled over, not wildly driving drunk, but explaining that he was dodging a recently fallen tree on the road. Donald thanked him, and we drove over to the large Spanish moss festooned tree, which had fallen across power lines and knocked out lights. So leaving the police car with its lights flashing, Donald and another fellow officer who appeared from the other direction, took up opposite ends of the blockade to direct one at a time traffic around the tree as we called the Florida utility company, which came an hour later and pulled the wires out of the mess, but did noting to the tree, saying another team would come to do that by day. During our stake out of the fallen tree, I stood with Donald as about half the nigh force stopped y to call, including his brother-in-law Dave and the police dog Votan, and the officer Bill with whom I had done my only previous ride-along. AT three o’clock, we turned our fallen tree over to the next shift, and drove toward home, stopping to refuel on the GPD credit card—not the highest mileage of vehicles, but rather sturdy with a large oversize battery to run all the trappings of the light bar.
NEW YEAR’S DAY AND FOLLOWING
UNITL ABRUPT GAINESVILLE DEPARTURE
Donald and I slept in a bit for the morning, and then got up to watch the Outback Bowl, which he and I attended in person four years ago when Don King furnished us tickets when Penn State played. But there was blood in this match: The UF Gators were mismatched against the UM Big Blue, which beat them after a good game.