If all you need is Andy and Barney, don't call in the SWAT team

 Until a year or so ago, I lived in a small town. Usually when I write about this town I mention it by name, but not this time. This time I'm likely to say some unkind things and I still have a friend serving on the village council there. I'd like to keep him, because he makes really good home-brewed beer and on occasion gives me some.

Anyway, it's not really the town's elected leaders I want to talk about, but rather some of their appointees; namely, the police.

When I moved to this town, which I will henceforth refer to as "Taylorville" since -- according to assorted ex-wives and girlfriends, I'm a narcissistic egomaniac -- there was one cop. His name was Rupert*, or Chief Addams if you were trying to talk your way out of a ticket.

Chief Addams was hired as the town's lone officer after retiring from the State Police. He spent most of his days in a cubicle down at the village offices. He read a lot of magazines, filed a little paperwork and on occasion drove the town's only police cruiser up and down main street to see if any crimes were being committed. This being Taylorville, none were.

In Taylorville, a "crime spree" consisted of kids TP-ing each others' houses after Homecoming. A "major crime spree" meant those same kids also had vandalized a couple mailboxes out on Youngman Road. About once a year, someone would break into the pizza joint or hardware store in the middle of the night and steal the $27.50 left overnight in the cash register. (I suspect the "perp" in these break-ins was Alvin McDonald, owner of the town's only insurance agency; without the occasional robbery the downtown business owners might cancel their theft policies.)

The only other crime committed with any regularity in Taylorville was the annual kidnapping of Jesus from the Methodist Church Nativity display. Every year on the first of December the Methodists would stick Jesus out there in the manger and every year he would go missing by December 20. Chief Addams would mount an investigation (from the comfort of his heated office) and wait for Jesus to turn up again Christmas Eve, as he always did, often on the bench in front of the village offices.

Then Chief Addams retired. He didn't really need the money and was growing weary of the malcontents calling him at home because their neighbor's pit bull wouldn't shut the hell up, already.

Rather than follow the time honored tradition of hiring another recent State Police retiree, the village council decided it was time to "shake things up." They hired a kid who looked almost old enough to order a beer, but not quite. Kevin Binkey, our new chief, subscribed to the Barney Fife philosophy of peace-keeping: Everyone is a suspect and guilty of something. Binkey wrote more tickets in his first week than Chief Addams had written in his career.

Great-grandfathers who had never received a ticket in their lives got their first from Chief Binkey, sometimes for the heinous crime of driving two miles per hour over the posted 25 mph limit. Others got tickets for turning right out of the grocery store parking lot without first engaging the correct blinker. And that seat belt law -- never popular in rural communities -- became a whole lot less popular under Binkey's Draconian rule.

The village council was amazed by how much revenue this generated. So amazed that they hired on another full time officer. Then a part-timer. Chief Binkey suddenly found himself leader of a police force. You could tell he liked it way too much. He began to strut around town like Darth Vader stalking the hallways of the Death Star.

Kids on skateboards got tickets. Old ladies crossing against the town's only traffic light got tickets. People who parked their cars in their front yards to wash them got tickets. The council used the extra revenue to hire yet another part time officer and buy a second, used cruiser.

Taylorville is now an orderly village. No one drives 26 miles per hour, but always 25. If Taylorville had trains, they would run on time.

And if there ever is a serious crime in Taylorville, you can be sure the law will be there. To pass out tickets to the gawkers and loiterers.

*All names changed in case I'm ever stopped for speeding or coasting through a stop sign within village limits.

Mike Taylor's book, Lookingat the Pint Half Full, is available at mtrealitycheck.com and in eBook format at Barnes & Noble, Border's Books and other online book sellers. Email Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

If only I had loved Spiderman just a little bit more…

My younger brother William collects comic books, Star Wars memorabilia and “action figures” (known as “dolls” to people who don’t collect action figures). I used to think he was a nerd, but he’s actually a pretty cool guy. He was married, has a couple kids—who also collect comic books and action figures—and lives a fairly normal life.

I usually only see Bil (that’s not a misspelling, by the way; he dropped the second L several years ago, don’t ask me why) at Christmas or when somebody dies. We don’t live far apart, but it always seems there’s something else going on.

Bil, along with my sisters and most of the rest of the family, still get together every Sunday at my sister’s place for dinner and whatever game is on TV; football this time of year, I think. I’m the artsy-fartsy one in the family, so it’s my job to know nothing about sports, a job I take seriously and perform to the best of my ability.

At any rate, I stopped by a couple Sundays ago, mostly because someone sent me a spam e-mail—which looked like the real thing—indicating my dad had died. Why someone would do something like this is anybody’s guess. I called my sister immediately and she assured me that—though he’s now using a walker—my dad is still kicking. Just the same, I decided to stop by and check for myself.

Sure enough, my old man was alive and well and watching football, though when he’s in his easy chair and fixated on the tube it’s sometimes hard to tell for sure.

We all had a big dinner courtesy of my sister Carol and then sat around talking until the kickoff for the Big Game (the one they’d been watching earlier was a Little Game, apparently). It was during this pre-game conversation that I learned Bil had recently opened a comic book store in Grand Rapids.

I was impressed. Imagine, one of my wayward clan operating a legitimate business rather than engaging in the drug-running and off-track betting parlors which have supported the Taylor family for so many generations.

Bil, who in “real life” is a nurse, said it was something he’d always wanted to do. I thought about it and realized it really was the culmination of a lifelong dream for my bro.

From the time we were little kids, William and I both read and collected comics with the ravenous appetite of a starving weasel set loose in a henhouse full of portly pullets. Superman, Batman, The Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Dr. Strange…we read ‘em all.

My collection was carefully arranged in a large, dusty pile beneath my bed. I kept my comics there for two reasons: 1) I didn’t care what happened to them, and 2) they excelled as camouflage for the torn-out pages I had purloined from my old man’s “Playboy” magazines.

Bil’s comics were read once, tucked into cellophane bags and placed—carefully—in a dresser drawer, later to be transferred to acid-free boxes and stored in whichever room in the house had the closest thing to a humidity-free atmosphere. Even back then, he was planning for the future.

My brother William was the ant and I was the grasshopper.

He continued collecting through the decades until he had hundreds, thousands of every type of comic imaginable. I, meanwhile, got rid of my comics as soon as I was old enough to no longer need a place to hide my girlie mags.

And now he is the proprietor of Bil’s Used Books and I’m eking out a living as a freelance writer and eating a lot of Ramen noodles.

If I were Aesop, I could find a moral here somewhere.

Contact Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

My career as a judge was short, though not especially sweet

In last week's column I made a disparaging remark about judges and now I want to take it back.  No, I did not receive a threatening letter from some personal injury attorney and no, nobody has suddenly "discovered" an old bench warrant for my unpaid parking tickets (though I'm guessing there's probably one out there somewhere).

The reason I feel compelled to retract my previous derogatory remark (it's available online if you're really interested) is this: I was recently called upon to serve as a judge myself.  Happily, I wasn't asked to send anyone to prison or the electric chair; all I had to do was decide who had the best Halloween costume.

This may not sound like a job requiring much wisdom, fortitude or legal acumen, but first prize was $75.  There were party-goers at the Riverbend Bar & Grille who really wanted that cash.  This despite the manic pace of the waitstaff, which suggested $75 would not have covered the bar tab of most of the patrons present.

My band was playing Halloween weekend, so I was tagged to "supervise" the costume judging contest.  Theoretically, the winner is determined by audience applause, but as anyone who has ever officiated at one of these things can tell you, this is like trying to organize a can of earthworms.  Earthworms who really like margaritas.  Still, taking my responsibilities seriously (for a change) I downloaded a sound-level meter ap for my Android (there really is an ap for everything).  I even tested it on my girlfriend's snoring, which registered roughly the same sound pressure levels as a 767 taking off from JFK.  (For rebuttals to this comment, please see Sweet Annie's Facebook page.)

I thought I was ready.  I was wrong.

First off, there were far more costumed contestants than I had expected.  To make matters worse, many of the costumes were really good.  In addition to the usual barroom assortment of sexy kittens, naughty nurses and Blues Brothers clones, there were hippies, disco kings and queens, Mother Nature, Indian princesses.  I myself came disguised as my band's lead guitar player, Nelson, who looks just like Otto, the bus driver from the TV show The Simpsons.  Nelson also came as Nelson, since he's too cool to wear a costume.

In addition to the good costumes there were plenty of lousy ones, mostly worn by younger guys who were more interested in meeting girls than in winning contests.

It wasn't until I announced the contest and called for the contestants to gather on the dance floor that I fully realized just how many contestants we had.  It was a crowd.

With the help of our sax player, Rocky, we introduced each contestant in turn and asked the audience to show its appreciation with applause.  It was at this point I realized that--although there is an ap for everything--not all of them work.  My sound meter was going off the charts and proving to be more or less useless.

So I was forced to keep track, in my head, of which contestant garnered the loudest applause.  Also, second and third place had to be accounted for.  I did my best, but at contest's end I could tell there was some dissension amongst the multitude as to the veracity of my judgments.  I think it was the shouted epithets and thrown beer bottles that tipped me off.  I felt a sudden affinity for major league umpires.

I managed to get to my car and make good my escape at the end of the night.  I haven't received any death threats from losing contestants.  But I'm pretty sure my career as a judge is over.

And to all you judges I offended last week: I really am sorry.  Turns out that job is tougher than it looks.

Mike Taylor's book, Looking at the Pint Half Full, is available at mtrealitycheck.com and in eBook format at Barnes & Noble, Border's Books and other online book sellers.  Email Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.