1975.

Sorry for the reflections, My Son sent this to me from my Mom's house in Oklahoma via his phone and please excuse the shorts, it's 1975, I had just returned to Carrollton from Galveston and unloaded the bike, a 75 TS400 Apache, I traded in a 74 DT360 to get this bike, I think the DT was a better bike but the TS had great power, A friend and I had hauled the bikes in the back of his 64 Chevy stepside pickup with under dash AC and a homemade quilt on the seat, it was comfortable, there was a free Elvin Bishop concert going on and our plan was to ride via the dirt around the miles long line of cars to the front of the line which worked great until we rolled into a swarm of Police who were all beyond their wits end with the chaos that was going on, I had some recreational material in my handlebar bag and a very angry female Police Officer ran up and grabbed my crossbar screaming in my face to turn it off "YOUR GOING TO JAIL" she said and turned around to get another Officer to assist her and briefly released her hand from my handlebar, at that point I took the opportunity to do a U turn around my buddy to the right and kicked in the afterburners in a northerly direction without looking back, I was terrified as I blew by the last car at the end of the line and hit the beach still in a full tuck 5th gear as fast as she would go, the things you notice when running for your life, I saw another friend (who I didn't even know was there) with his pickup parked side by side to another one and slid the bike in between the two trucks and threw a blanket over it, for all I knew they didn't even give chase but I couldn't take any chances, later my buddy who was with me showed up and told me the Officer was throwing a fit, she said "That boy's going to jail" it didn't happen, we both missed the concert but lived to tell the story which is just one of many from the old days and just for the record the recreational material was left in the 70s.

Back then that recreational material would have got you some serious time. Good story, I remember a friend's brother consume an entire stash to avoid being caught green handed when a trooper lit up the truck we were riding in (were we going to Mother Blues? maybe). By the time the cop had come back with the license, said brother had passed out and rolled into the F250's footwell. "Is he OK" the cop asked? "Sure I said, just really, really drunk!"

Great story, I was still living in Hawaii at that time and the "system" was more forgiving. "You boys go home and do that sh..". Moving here in 76 was an eye opener to say the least. RH