THE TRUTH LIESWITHIN

October 27, 2001   Volume I  Issue 130

Environmentally friendly since late 1999

Made entirely of recycled bits & words 

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In 1968 I purchased my first car with my own money. It was a blue 1964 Chevy Bel Air. It cost me $800 to purchase it from some guy in Uniondale, Long Island. At the time I was looking at new cars and couldn’t afford to spend the more than $2,500 that most moderate priced cars cost at the time. I remember looking at a brand-new Volkswagen Beetle for $1,800. Although that was in my budget, I really couldn’t see myself in one of those tiny, tinny contraptions. Those were the days of the Muscle Cars that had names like Barracuda, Charger, G.T.O., and Javelin. So I lowered my sights and settled for a four-year-old Chevy. In those days, a Chevy was a utilitarian vehicle. They were tough, well built, and relatively inexpensive to own and maintain.

Working three jobs and going to college and yet I couldn’t afford a new car. Some of my friends took advantage of a generous government student loan program that would provide up to $3,000. Although the money was supposed to be used for college, many students used it to buy new cars. After all, they reasoned, we needed transportation to get to college, or so the argument went. The deal was really sweet as the loan did not require any payments until six months after college graduation and carried a 3% interest rate, which was half of the going 6% rate at the time. If you went into teaching for a certain number of years, you didn’t have to pay back the loan at all. I was not really into borrowing money in those days, and certainly not for something like a car. My father was in his 50s before he took out his first car loan and he was 71 before he took out his first mortgage. We were not from the borrowers, as you can see. So I used my hard-earned savings to buy the best car I could. It came with a fabulous AM radio, which at least had push buttons. Even then I liked loud music. My brother, Steve, bought me a reverb unit for my car radio as a present for my 20th birthday. I hooked up a twelve-inch speaker under the rear deck lid. This was not a car audio speaker but a big-mother woofer designed for a home stereo system. We hooked the reverb unit up to that speaker so that the music coming from the back of the car sounded as if it were coming from within a garbage can. It was my version of the boom box. It wasn’t the latest FM-Stereo, but it served its purpose.

One day I was crossing an intersection when a fellow seemed to come out of nowhere and hit my car across the front. He suffered little damage, but the entire front end of my car was demolished. I could not afford collision insurance in those days and the repair bill would have run about $750, which seemed rather excessive for a car that cost me $800. So we did the next best thing. We went to a junk yard and found a 1964 Chevy and purchased the front end for $125 and for an additional $125 we had it installed. That seemed to solve the problem except for one tiny detail. Since the front end we had purchased came off of a taxi cab, it was orange while the rest of my car was blue. Talk about a two-tone color scheme. It made my car much easier to find in parking lots, but it also made me a target for every traffic cop from Rockaway to Brooklyn.

Since we had been traveling the route from Far Rockaway to Brooklyn College for more than two years, we knew where all the speed traps were and we were very careful not to speed through them. One such trap was located on Flatbush Avenue just north of Floyd Bennett Field. It was one of those old fashioned electrical traps where they had two strips along the ground and measured the time it takes for the car to pass over them thereby determining the speed of said vehicle. One sunny morning, I was transporting five or six of my fellow students to school, including my regulars, Lenny and John. In those days Lenny was a long-haired type who liked to answer government forms in an unusual way. When they asked the question about race or national origin, Lenny always checked off "Other" and then wrote in "Freaks." This would explain why he never got a cushy government job.

On that fateful morning we were passing through the known speed trap when a police officer up the road was stopping vehicles. He had stopped the car in front of us which was a 1964 Buick, the same color blue as mine, without the orange front. He waved that car on and pointed to me. Before I could say a word, he was handing me a ticket that was already made out. All he had to do was fill in my particulars. He claimed I was doing 50 in a 35 zone. In a pig’s eye. Since an intelligent discussion was not going to be effective, I took my ticket and decided to throw myself on the mercy of the court and hope that there was still justice in America. I plead not guilty.

I also decided then and there that we had to do something about the appearance of my car. I was convinced, as were my passengers, that I had been singled out because of the unique color scheme of my vehicle and the cargo of student freaks that I was transporting across county lines for educational purposes. I went to Earl Scheib, who advertised that he would paint any car for $19.95. Apparently, he would paint any car but mine for that price. When they got through with the mandatory body work they said I needed to fix a few dents and dings, the bill skyrocketed to more than $100. That doesn’t sound like much in today’s dollars, but it is a fivefold increase over the advertised price. Imagine, if you will, someone telling you they would paint your car for only $200 and when they got done, it was going to cost you more than $1,000. Needless to say, Earl Scheib was not going to get my business, nor give me the business either. Since one of my three jobs was working in Empire Hardware after school, I asked the boss, Julie, what kind of paint I could use on my car. He suggested Interlux Marine paint, which is used to paint boats, and the closest thing to auto paint that we carried. Since I got a one-third off discount, and they had a shade of blue similar to my car’s color, I decided to take the plunge and enter the exciting world of auto painting. Julie suggested I rent a paint sprayer from them, as it would be a more professional job. I thought about, but the idea of masking all the windows and chrome and the mess of spraying paint all over the place didn’t appeal to me. We used brushes.

One sunny afternoon, we prevailed upon my girlfriend, Sheila Peress, and the kindness of her parents, to use their driveway as our painting studio. My brothers and I, armed with paint brushes, raw guts, and not much experience, set about the task of painting the front of my car. When we were done, we had an all blue auto, albeit two different shades. At least I got rid of that hideous orange, and hopefully, the target that told every cop to check this kid’s I.D.

When I arrived at traffic court on the day of my trial, I saw the two officers who had given me the ticket and about 50 victims of their nefarious speed trap. Since several of the victims had their trials before mine, I got to learn the routine. It was four against one as they had the two officers testify to their test procedures of the equipment at the start and end of the day of ticketing the motorist, and a third cop from the police equipment division testifying that the unit was tested on such and such a day for accuracy and an attorney for the City of New York who was feeding the questions to the cops. I was amazed how the equipment maintenance officer testified that the equipment had been bench tested a few days before and a few days after each ticket, and was found to be in complete working order. The officer that ran the speed trap always testified that when they "set up the trap in the morning they placed the two strips exactly 22 feet apart."

He further testified that the other officer, Di Stefano, "then proceeded to ride his vehicle over the strips at a speed of 35 miles per hour. When his front wheels rode over the first strip, I heard an audible beep. When his front wheels ran over the second strip, I again heard an audible beep and the speedometer on the device registered 35 miles per hour. Officer Di Stefano then ran his vehicle over the test strips at a speed of 65 miles per hour. When his front wheels rode over the first strip," yada, yada, yada. This proved to be an unbeatable combination as everyone that they ticketed that day lost. I noticed that no one was ever found to be not guilty, but rather the judge would pronounce that a "reasonable doubt exists," and dismiss the fine. I guess they didn’t want to make the cop look stupid or wrong, although in one instance, they had no choice. In those days you went to court with a real traffic court judge, even for a parking ticket. There was a fellow motorist who received a parking ticket for alternate side parking violation. In case you are not familiar with the concept of alternate side of the street parking regulations, there are many areas in New York City where they have alternate side of the street parking. Usually the signs on one side of the street will say "No parking on Tuesday and Friday from 6:00 A.M. to 11:00 A.M." and the other(alternate) side will have signs reading "No parking on Monday and Thursday from 6:00 A.M. to 11:00 A.M." Wednesday is usually a freebie. The times differ in different neighborhoods and the purpose is to allow for street cleaning, which apparently they don’t do on Wednesday.

The guy testified that he was parked on a Wednesday(which was the date on the ticket) and that he was legally parked. The officer testified that the sign said "No parking Monday to Wednesday." The judge told the cop that he lives in Brooklyn(where the ticket was given) and that he knows what the signs say and was not going to buy the cop’s lame explanation. The judge asked the motorist why he didn’t go to the police station to have them take care of the ticket and he replied that he did but was told he had to go to court. The judge dismissed the case and then asked if there were any more people with parking tickets for that date. Several people got up and the judge dismissed all their tickets at once. I then overheard him giving hell to the cop and telling him something to the effect that if he ever shows up in the judge’s courtroom with tickets like that again, he would be cited and would wish he hadn’t. I thought that I at least had a fair judge, and although the odds were still four to one against me, I decided I had nothing to lose. So I waited patiently for my turn at the plate.

When it came, the boys went through their carefully rehearse schpeil, which I had heard about 50 times at this point. I was surprised to learn that officer Di Stefano gives out about fifteen hundred speeding tickets a month. He must have been a great source of revenue for the City of New York. When asked if I wanted to question the officer before my testimony, I felt at last my time had come. I noticed that when they testified, they were always looking in their hats, where they apparently wrote down the details of the bust. Since most of them were the same, the stories were pretty much pat. I figured a guy who gave out fifteen hundred tickets a month couldn’t possibly remember each and every motorist, or else he would have been a detective by now. After he read the description of my blue 1964 Chevy Bel Air(which he got from my registration), I asked him if he remembered anything unusual about my car. He replied, "No." "Do you remember stopping a similar vehicle to mine and then waving him on and pulling me over?" They say a good lawyer never asks a question without knowing the answer beforehand, but even Matlock couldn’t have been prepared for the next one. They also say that anyone who represents himself has a fool for a client, but in this case, I think the fool was sitting in the witness chair. That was my lucky break, when Cool Hand Luke made his big mistake. Instead of answering the question with a yes or a no, he said "I don’t know, I might have." I smelled reasonable doubt all over his cocky lips.

Now it was my turn. I took the stand and was ready to present my case. I told my story and only embellished slightly. I told the judge that the car that the officer stopped directly in front of mine was a Chevy, since the Chevy and Buicks looked so much alike in those days. I was only trying to bolster my case. I had reservations about lying, but then I had just heard a cop make up a whole B.S. story about the parking signs when every New Yorker who drives a car knows that there is no alternate side of the street parking on Wednesday. I proceeded to remind the judge that when I asked the officer if there was anything unusual about my car, he had said "No" when in fact due to a previous accident, the entire front of my car was orange and the back was blue and it would be extremely difficult to miss. I further testified about my knowledge of the speed trap, as I drive through it every day and would have to be a moron to knowingly speed through there, and that it was my contention that the fellow in front of me was the one who was probably speeding. I stopped short of calling the officer a liar who only stopped me because of my unusual looking car and assortment of rag tag college student passengers. The judge questioned me and said "You mean to say that the officer pulled someone else in a similar car over first, let him go and then pulled you over instead? And your car is orange and blue from an accident? I hope you are driving much more carefully now and that accident was not your fault." I was on a roll and about to testify about "the 27 color 8 X 10 glossy photos with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used against me in a court of law," when I realized that this was from Arlo Guthrie’s "Alice’s Restaurant Massacree" and had nothing to do with my case. I wisely rested my case and awaited my fate. The judge pronounced that a "reasonable doubt exists" and dismissed the charges. Di Stefano was crestfallen as I was the only one to beat the rap that day. Probably the only case he ever lost. Clarence Darrow would have been proud.

Since the court hearing, I had been contemplating the fact that my car, although all blue now, was still unusual and still a target for police profiling. In those days young drivers were routinely stopped and asked for the licence and registration, especially if they had long hair and were hippie looking. I had longish hair but not down to my shoulders. I was more Elvis than Beatles. I never got stopped until my car was two-toned and then I became a target. I decided that being incognito and anonymous had its advantages and I wanted to partake of that. So I reconvened the painting party, this time with Lenny, Gary, Sheila, John, Steve and his friends. We got some more Interlux Marine paint and headed for Sheila’s driveway. I don’t think her dad was too thrilled, but we attacked the car once again with brushes. We had my friend, Gary Keneipp, paint the roof as he was the tallest in the group and the only one capable of reaching it. He was also somewhat of an art talent and couldn’t resist signing his name to his work.

While we are on the subject of artists, my brother, Steve, had a friend, Bob Cini, who was a very talented artist in his own right. He was present at many of our adventures including the first painting party. He chronicled several of our misadventures in comic strip form. He drew a cartoon of us painting the Chevy and titled it something like "Irv Paints His Car." His style was similar to that of Don Martin of Mad Magazine. In the first panel you see my Chevy with the front end orange and the rest of the car blue. Then we attack the car with paint and brushes. In the last panel, Steve and I are staring at the car with our mouths agape and the words "Oh no!" coming from us. The reason for our astonishment is that we have now painted the front of the car blue and the rest orange, thereby reversing the original problem. Steve has been unable to locate these wonderful cartoons, but when he does, I will add them to the Web site so you can enjoy them as well.

As a reward for not painting the car orange again, I provided pizza and soda for the gang, but no beer as we didn’t mask the windows and the chrome. Had I sprung for the suds, then Bob’s cartoon might well have become a reality. When we were done, I again had a one-toned inconspicuous automobile, even if it wasn’t a standard GM color and you could see the brush strokes. It looked like a Chevy Van Gogh. I was just slightly ahead of my time.

And THAT, was my two-cents plain!

Irvmeister,

The artist formerly known as ô¿ô

Meisterzingers

I was in a creative mood so I composed a little song to help the war effort. I hope that it will be as inspiring as "Over There" was to World War I. Of course, I am no George M. Cohan, but then, he is no Jew, despite having a Jewish sounding name. My ditty is sung to the tune of that other famous Irishman, Paul McCartney’s "Band on the Run."

Taliban on the Run <---Play the midi

Osama with a mighty stash

Terror acts to fund

He ordered stolen planes to crash

And anthrax by the ton

Push came to shove

Bush took off the gloves

And the Texan man he had a plan

And got himself some guns

Taliban on the run

Taliban on the run

The plan exploded as we found their cash

And cut off all their funds

We searched from Maine to Marakesh

And now they’re on the run

Taliban on the run

Taliban on the run

Osama man faces Uncle Sam

On the wrong end of a gun

Taliban on the run

Taliban on the run

The desert roared with the sounds of war

Of sorties yet to come

We won’t give up ‘til we even the score

And kill the filthy scum

Taliban on the run

Taliban on the run

And the highest judge

Will hold a grudge

Until they are no more

Taliban on the run

Taliban on the run

Taliban on the run

Taliban on the run

Federal Bonehead Institute

By the way, nice move by the FBI last week, bragging that they narrowed the search for the anthrax mailer down to one square mile of Trenton, NJ. They had spokes people on the media state that they could practically reach out and touch him on the shoulder. They narrowed it down to 250-500 addresses.

You know, when I was an investigator, I may not have been as sophisticated as the FBI, but I would never go on national television and broadcast that I was about to nab a guy and warn him to leave, until I actually had him. But, hey, that’s just me. I notice that he isn’t custody yet. Do you think he watches MSNBC or CNN?

Oh yeah, Dubya still doesn’t have anthrax according to him. Although he won’t admit to having been tested. And he didn’t use cocaine, Clinton didn’t inhale of have sex with "that woman" either. You know he never would have gotten into all that trouble if he stopped right there and never said "Miss Lewinsky." Those two words led to his impeachment because if he never said her name, he would not have lied to the public. He could have plausible denial and later on say, "Oh that woman, I thought you meant some other woman." It was a lot better than hanging his defense on the definition of "is."

Letters to the Editor

Re: Ordinary People . . . Extraordinary Deeds

Very moving piece, Irv.

You know, Rush and Ollie would say the same words,
but somehow it has a different meaning coming from your lips. It's funny how
patriotism can spill forth. I just hope superpatriotism doesn't overtake our
land; I prefer not being pompous, yet appreciative of what we do have. I
don't want Bush taking this on as a crusade (remember that back in the 1000
AD time). We need to be very vigilant in more than one way. I don't want
might to win over right. I want right to win over stupidity and lack of
tolerance. We are not holier than thou. And with our fine Prez he
approaches that line too often. We have never won anything with war. Even
our civil war left us with scars of racism. Let's have a love fest.

Sheila, Tucson, AZ

I'm game. Name the time and the place. You mention Rush and Ollie, but what would Kukla and Fran have to say about it?
Thanks for the kind words. I have never advocated war and violence, however,
there are times when there is very little choice, and this appears to be one of them. I don't think these people will respond to reason. The only way we
will win is if there are more of us and less of them.
We must be forever on our guard against our government, which may take
advantage of this situation to repeal our hard won freedoms. That we must
never allow. (ED.)

Irv:
This was quite good, I enjoyed reading it. I think you missed your
calling.
Florence Peress, Long Island, NY


Thanks Florence,
What should my calling have been? I don't think the priesthood or the rabbinate is in the cards for me. If you mean writing, I don't think I missed it as I am doing it. I just
haven't been paid yet, but that too, may change. (ED.)

Beautifully done, Irv.
B. S. Pyle, TX
http://www.bspyle.com

Good article, Irv. There's absolutely nothing I can find to argue about. I'll getcha next week perhaps.

Fred Mass, Ronkonkoma, NY

After seeing one "memorial" after another, burying innocent friends and unintentional heroes, I am so full of pain, I can't even take another "Osama" joke or reference to him. However, I found your article this week quite inspiring and a bit of a breath of fresh air. Thanks. I needed that.

Elisa H. Long Island, NY

Thanks Elisa,

There are Osama jokes? How come I haven’t gotten any? I appreciate the nice comments. We do what we can(ED.)

Irv:
Thanks for the send today.
It was most informative. "What Happened to the Rest of the Charmin, Mr. Whipple?"
Pete Oceanside, NY

Oh and boo the way,

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