BTW, the abraded area at the business end was from where the serial number disappeared.
Back in the anything-but-boring ’70s, there was a motorcycle cop who was like runnin’ an independent investigation. This line of inquiry necessitated his visiting for two hours or so every afternoon a certain pretty Miss who resided on Reservoir Ave. A small band of young teens (all permanently AWOL from high school) picked up on the pattern and noticed that he was in the habit of leaving his nightstick out on the bike. Unbeknownst to the Harley policeman he was provoking the little hooligans just as sure as if he was flapping a red flag in front of a bull.
So’s after some weeks of double and triple dares and I-will-if-you-will, one day, on the nonchalant, the schemers saunter by and the wooden blunt object walks away with them. Being a bunch of clever rascals, they walk over to Webster, over to Prospect, over to Lienau and back down Reservoir to lodge themselves in one of their houses, right across the street from where the motorcycle was parked. Then’s they get down on the floor and peep up behind the curtains and just over the window sill. After a bit of a wait, that day’s interview apparently concluded, the officer exits the house and proceeds to the bike. As soon as he sees the machine, with a look on his face as good as any silent film star, he obviously realizes that the nightstick is gone. Hoping against hope, he returns to the young lady’s place. As of course it’s not there, back out he walks. Now the equal of any Yale Drama student (even though the audience consists of nothing but a pack of snickering Heights urchins), the officer emotes anger, bargaining, depression and at last acceptance; he gets on the radio and reports the weapon missing.
The street fills with cops. They start looking under cars, behind bushes and in garbage cans, without any luck needless to say. All the while a red-in-the face higher-up seems to be one minute yelling at and the next demanding answers from the motorcycle cop. The kids couldn’t hear inside what was being said, but they could tell that some malarkey was being peddled by the one and the other — out of diapers some dozens of years, not hours — wasn’t buying it.
A couple of days later, after the commotion subsided, the absconders just gave the nightstick to a local wastrel. As these items have a serial number carved in, sorta like a gun, that ID had to be made to disappear.
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