COP Columns

On The Beat

Pretty It Ain't

Chris Feltman man told me the other night about the guy who cooked himself. We were riding in Arlington, around Crystal City, waiting for something to happen and telling war stories.

The guy was a drunk, one of the regulars. Every jurisdiction has some of them. They get up in the morning and start drinking. All day they drink. Maybe they stop to panhandle for money to buy something else to drink. Beer, fortified wine, hair tonic, it doesn't matter. A lot of them would probably drink brake fluid if they got the chance. Why they do it isn't clear to normal people. Slowly they crumble.

Well, this guy got really lit up. He felt too tired to go on, and crawled into an abandoned car to sleep it off. The windows were closed. The sun came up, as will happen. When the med techs got to the body the temperature was over a hundred degrees in the car. The guy cooked to death, never woke up. He was thirty-nine.

Felton's an interesting cop. A white guy, he has been with the Arlington department for over five years, and speaks Spanish, which he learned during a good many years of working with Salvadoran migrant workers in Burke, Virginia. Literary Spanish it ain't, but it works. He gets called a lot as a translator.

The Hispanic presence in Arlington is large and growing. Social patterns are pretty clear. They aren't educated people, come from countries where few rise economically, and tend to live day-to-day, without ambition. Many buy flashy cars with most of their paychecks and barely make the rent. The adults may or may not learn English, though a lot of them learn enough to get by. The kids do learn.

They aren't bad people. For the most part they are courteous and likeable, but most aren't going anywhere. They're delighted just to have a reasonably decent apartment and a job. As workers they are in demand because they show up, work hard, and don't have an attitude. Consequently trouble is brewing between them and blacks, because all the jobs are going to Hispanics. The young do not do well in school, which is going to be a problem with the next generation.

We got a call, some kind of domestic, translator needed. Off we went.

On the way over Felton told about the drunks who slept under the bridge in Arlington. Like most, they lived on a diet of Thunderbird, Ritz crackers, and Vienna sausages, and drank themselves unconscious at every available opportunity.

Drunks do this until their livers quit, and then they stop.

One of them told Felton that these guys played a game. They'd drink until the first one passed out, and the others would, er, have their way with him. Cops have seen everything several times, but this was hard to believe. One night, though, Felton looked under the bridge, and here was one guy passed out with his trousers down, and the rest unconscious around him.

Life under bridges is a little different.

In fact, lots of lives at the bottom of things are a little different. At one point Felton and I were talking in a parking lot with a drunk I'll call Carlos. He may have been in his fifties. If you drink enough, you can appear to be in your fifties when you're nineteen, so maybe I'm wrong. Carlos was good-natured and talkative, a tad overweight so he wasn't starving, and spoke maybe five words of English.

Cops aren't hostile to drunks, at least if that's all they are, and tend to chat with the street life to keep abreast of things, and just to pass a slow night. You can get a lot of news about who is doing what that way. Carlos knew Felton.

Unfortunately Carlos wasn't entirely sober, so he wasn't real articulate. He didn't have any booze on his person, so he wasn't doing anything particularly illegal. He rambled. His hands might be dirty, he said, but his heart and soul were clean. He was from El Salvador. "Viva Salvador," said Felton. Carlos was pleased. Could he sing a song? Sure, Felton said.

I think it was the Salvadoran national anthem, but from across the car I couldn't tell. Carlos put his soul into it, but not too much technique. He finished and laughed. Nice enough guy. Just boozy and maybe only one oar in the water.

OK, I was going to tell you about the domestic, but ran out of space. Next week.

Buy Fred's New Collection of Sedition and Outrage! Curmudgeing Through Paradise What the critics are saying "Despicable. Without redeeming features": New York Preview of Books "Fred be discriminate!": Al Sharpton "Fred--that ugh! man--is the ideological equivalent of the Hillside Strangler": The American Feminist "Fred deserves his own entry in the DSM V": Psychology Today Note: If emailing, do not remove the slashes that appear in the subject line as otherwise, to avoid spam, your email will be heartlessly auto-deleted. Other Note: I try to read all letters, but simply cannot respond to hundreds of emails. Neither rudeness nor delusional self-importance is involved. Just can't do it. My apologies. Web FOE See? You are not alone. Which may or may not be a good thing. At any rate, there are other twisted, brain-fried wackos out there who have too much time on their hands and read this stuff, probably while cleaning their guns. But don't worry. This site wraps its IP packets in plain brown envelopes marked "Kinky Books" so your neighbors won't know. Anyway, to the extent that counters mean any thing, which isn't much of an extent, this sucker gives the number of columns read, not counting subscribers, since Monday, October 8, 2002. Whoopee-do. More or less. Nekkid in Austin Buy Fred's new reprehensible book, Nekkid In Austin! Barnes and Noble has the beast. Another collection of outrages, irresponsible ravings, and curmudgeonry from Fred On Everything and some innocent magazines that foolishly published him. Put Fred Reed in the search at thingy at B&N and the book will pop up like mushrooms on a decaying stump. Tell everyone you came to the site by mistake while searching for articles on cannibalism. Your childhood made you do it. We're all victims nowadays. The Great Possum-Squashing and Beer Storm of 1962 Stock up. Christmas will eventually come again, if it isn't outlawed. Possum-Squashing is a better present than an ugly tie. At least as good anyway. Terms of Use | | About Fred | Subscribe | Unsubscribe ©Fred Reed www.FredOnEverything.net Site designed by Emily Wolfer edesign@healthyspiritllc.com