It was the tail end of the decade. It was the Sixties, of course. Several of us who had just enrolled in a university in Florida were lucky to be able to rent an apartment right on the beach in a nearby coastal town. Mornings were glorious and I could wake and walk down the deck stairs to the sand and water with the sunrise just coming up to greet me. Days were sweltering with no air conditioning in this old vacation joint in the summer before our lease ran out in late fall. Nights were crazy.
There were six or seven of us sharing the rent at the beach place (who was actually a tenant seemed to change from day to day). One of the boys called for a party to celebrate whatever. It didn’t matter what. This gave me the chance to invite a girl in one of my classes that I didn’t know well but wanted to.
When she showed up that evening few others had arrived, so I thought this was going to be a quiet evening of love. By eleven or so there were at least two maybe three hundred wild college kids at the place. Outside the beach was filling up and getting loud. While we could still hear each other my sweet girl told me she was happy to have a bit of a free night because she lived at home with here dad. And her dad was the college dean. She opened her purse and pulled out a hash pipe and a hefty chunk of hashish to go with it. Holy Shit, the dean’s daughter!
More people kept arriving and one guy who was sitting by the door lit up a flower bud and was waving around the pot smoke like an incense censer. In came two local cops who looked down at the pot guy, looked around, looked amazed, shrugged and left.
We weren’t sure if the cops were going for reinforcements so my date and several of us thought it was our cue to exit. One of the dozen or so that headed for the cars expressed doubt that the police would come back. But another, who was no less than my Instructor of Introductory Spanish, Beverly G., said that she could predict an arrest is imminent because her father was the sergeant of the police in a nearby town. She said let’s all go to my place, wait it out, and cool off. She lived with her dad in a nice Florida style house with a beautiful pool. Dad was at work on the night shift. And just as we all got in the pool, naked as jays, we heard the siren headed our way. Instructor Beverly started screaming everybody out! Out now! Run! God knows we ran.
So much for my romantic night with the dean’s daughter. I got an A in Spanish but I hadn’t really done very well in the class. I guess the grade was a little gift, a suggestion to just let’s-not-mention-it. But I still wonder if Beverly hadn’t set it up.
Two Strikes 