The Fairmont Flats Copper Caper

Just one old Con man to another.

.... © by D. Grant DeMan

During the mid-fifties, Jack Western and Fred Cronkite were both fearless lawmen of the London Township Police near London Ontario. The following tale is derived from an actual incident involving these two officers. While attempting to maintain the humor, I have humbly re-spun it with imagined embellishments from an incarcerated perpetrator's viewpoint.
Just one old con to another.

Well, Old River Rat, you've been glued to the window for a spell. Quiet as a midnight morgue. And I don't care a fiddler's fandango if you set right there and do your whole time. I gotta jaw with somebody - though I don't git jackass dung fer my wisdom - as to the means of my arrival, the manner in which them 'normous bluecoats, Cronky and Brady Jack turned their six-guns on me down Fairmont Flats way. Lead flyin' ever' which way, it was.

Now I ain't just a plain ragbird, as some suspecterate. I got me a woman of substance waiting home, and I well recall the morning I went wrong with Marcy, as she rolled dough fer my apple pie, "Binny Flowers. I hate to stir you, but we got no money, and you been sickly with plugged plumbing. So just mebbe you might go yard spadin' for some town folks, and flush it out your system."

Now, shovel me some blue chips for gumption, I limped from door to door, which mostly got slammed on my honker. No excuse, like I was feeling blue, but I wound up at Y'all Come Inn and downing a brew when I eye's Conch and Snag. "You still got that old pickup?" Snag is chompin' raw hamburger from butcher-wrap.

"Sure thing," says I. "But no gas to speak of."

"We'll fetcha some gas," Conch tells me. "Just meet us here at ten. Okay?"

"Well, I donno. Marcy don't like me hanging here as I just got out of the joint last month, and - well - you know...." I shoulda backed out there - my parole guy warned me - but weren't them guys buying the beer? Now where's the harm? I says to myself, and right soon I'm mellow. I sauntered home to catch the last meatball, and have myself a wedge of Marcy's pie, though she served me so quiet I could hear the click of roaches under the table.

I tipitoes out, fires up Old Tilly and makes it to the Y'all where Snag jumps in, while Conch fetches the bucket and a hose, draining the Chevy next to us. While he's pouring that into the truck, Snag gives me the dope, "we got us an order for a ton of copper, and we knows where to secure that amount. Three-way split."

It's a rough drive onto the Flats down the East Township, through ponds, around Solly's Swamp and up the tracks to a string of boxcars. It don't take Snag a second to chop off the lock of the end one, and we loads old Tilly to the gunwales. As it turns out, too much so, for when that 'normous police car zoomed in, we bottomed out all over, consequenchly hittin' a chain link at the creek. Yahoo, Geronimo! We bailed and scattered.

Constable Cronkey goes for Snag and Conch, and I figures that's my break so I scramble down the bottom of a draw. I did not be thinking about black moustache Brady Jack standing at the top: "Stop or I'll shoot!" Well sir, as I turns to duck under those trees, he lets one off, then two. Them bullets whizzed all around - he musta had a machine gun - and I could swear one went plumb through my skull. The pain was that noisome.

"Ya got me. Ya got me dead!" I calls. Then it hits me that I sudden-like lost the constipation simultaneous.

"My good friend," Brady Jack tells me, "You haven't been hit. Except with this branch which fell on your noggin." So he goes to cuff me, and when he realizes what all I done in my pants, gets mighty ticked. "Oh my oh my oh my. Manoman, couldn't you control yourself? The stench would draw blow flies off an outhouse!"

They take us - me cuffed in the middle - through the back door of the police station where they store the stuff they stole from prisoners and such, and there they lets some slobbering steel-fanged police dog chained to a gum machine have a go at tearing us to ribbons. "I confess!" yells out Snag.

"Git the dog off and I'll sign anything," Conch is having the rear of his britches ripped out. There's gumballs and glass flying along with the contents of the table. Knives and guns every which way. But that hound wouldn't touch me for the smell, I guess.

Those two gendarmes are cackling like roosters on a Rhode Island Red when the Chief of Police in a big white hat pokes in. "Sombody having trouble in here," he asks, inhales my phew, and retreats to his office. Pronto.

"Western! Get in here," I hear the Chief call, and I knows Brady Jack's in bad, and I'm gonna get me a piece of what he's takin' right now. Yep, they drag me out, strip me naked and wash me down in the parking lot like some damn police wagon. Later in City Jail I take a shower. Marcy came down and threw my coveralls at me without a word. She's some pissed I got five counts, and two years up river before I gets once more to taste her apple pie.

Old Timer, I'll wager fifty years from now they'll be laughing about old Binny crapping his drawers down in Fairmont Flats while boosting a few bucks worth of copper. Next time, I gotta crap before I go to work.

Now they calls me "Stinky" out in the yard. Stinky Flowers. What a legacy to leave my spawn!

Naw, I don't got no kids, but Marcy and I been thinking, ya know.

Might just raise a whole bouquet.