THE MAYOR OF McDONALD'S QUARTERS

Naples shameful ghetto, McDonald's Quarters, didn't have a city council member but they did have a "mayor." His name was Splitcoat. Though I, nor any of the oldtime cops I've asked remember his real name, everyone remembers Splitcoat.

He looked like the wonderful actor Tim Moore who played Kingfish on the TV version of Amos n' Andy. Once he told Dave Dampier how he got that name. As a young man, in the 40's, he was the proud owner of a zoot suit. One of those atrocities with baggy, pegged trousers and a swallow-tail coat. He wore it to a carnival one night.

Playing the game where you throw a baseball and try to knock over a pyramid of wooden milk bottles, he would vigorously wind up, causing the tails on his coat to flap in the breeze. The attendant crowd began to yell, "Go Splitcoat, Go." The name stuck.

Splitcoat, who lived across the street from Rabbit's juke, and two doors down from the Dew Drop Inn, supplemented his Social Security check by running a card game. Although illegal, we turned our heads unless it got rowdy and dangerous. One night I received a call from hiz zonner, asking for my presence at his house.

"They won't lets me cut the pot," he complained, tears in his eyes. Cutting the pot is when the proprietor of the game takes an amount from each pot to pay the overhead. Just like they do in Vegas.

"I'm not the one to tell about it," I explained, "it's against the law for you to even be running that game."

"But, I only wants a dime a hand." he persisted. "I pays the rent, buys the beer, and cuttin' the pot a dime a hand is fair."

I had to agree. So I left the law on the front porch, and went inside and told the players to give Splitcoat his damn dime.

Splitcoat loved fish head soup and when I could turn up a few snook heads at the pier I'd take them to him. A Porterhouse steak wouldn't have been met with a happier reception. He'd start to work, getting all the meat off the bones--eyes and all-- put it in a pot with his fixin's and pretty soon it was boiling. Never worked up the nerve to try any, but it did smell good.

His language was sprinkled with Splitcoatisms. "The hurrier I goes, the behinder I gets," he'd say. Or my favorite, "Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but nobody want to die."

I can still see him on the front porch of his hovel, rocking in his chair and surveying his domain, the squalid curtilage of McDonald's Quarters.

HOMEMADE HIGH TECH

Chief Ben Caruthers was always inventive at getting what we needed. Since we never had any money for extras, it was usually by horse trading. Or diverse means.

He cut a deal with the FBI's Miami office to use our pistol range. In return, they furnished us with practice ammo. And they were very liberal with their free training for the NPD.

There was other stuff Ben arranged for us. Our Detective was the photographer, too. And the Crime Scene dude. It was one of the things you had to learn to do when you were assigned that job. Take the photos, develop them, and print them. Trouble was our equipment was old and terrible and there was no place to get proper training.

Ben made some deal with Kodak--don't know what--and soon I received personal lessons from a Kodak teacher, an enlarger appeared out of nowhere, and I had enough free film to open a photo store.

When Ben heard about shotgun mikes, he had to be more inventive. A shotgun mike would allow a person to listen to conversations from a long distance. Great for surveillance! It was a bundle of different length tubes, that you aimed at the target. The tubes resonated at different frequencies and sucked the sound in, where a small amp sent it thru earphones to the listener. We had to have one but they cost thousands. So Ben went to work.

We scrounged up a schematic out of a magazine. Ben found an aluminum supplier in town who almost gave us the tubing. We used a cheap Radio Shack solid state amp and mike. Having experience in electronics, I went to work putting it together. When it was finished, we went over to Cambier Park to test it.

Worked great! If you wanted to hear birds. We could hear a Purple-Butted Burbler a 100 yards away. People conversing? Nothing. I went back and checked the plans. That's when I found the magazine was a bird watching rag. It was supposed to heighten bird sounds. Finally, by adjusting tube lengths, we got it to work on human voices.

But, there were times when the clandestine conversations of surveillance subjects were interrupted by the tepid tweeting of a Tufted Titmouse. Or whatever avian happened to be a little off-key that day.

YOU CAN'T DO WHAT?

When we used to gather at 4 Corners, in the early morning, we'd play a little game. We'd watch the North bound and South bound cars and see if anything about them made us suspicious. The way the driver looked or wouldn't look at us. Was he driving too slow. How'd was the car riding. Too low on the springs, indicating he might have a load of stolen goods in the trunk.

Some of us, like Byron Tomlinson, were experts at this game. Byron said the hair would stand up on his neck when there was something that wasn't righteous about the vehicle or driver. And a great majority of the time he was right.

We were trying to develop "cop's intuition", an extra sense that allows you to quickly survey a situation and just know that something is wrong. All good cops develop this skill. It saves their lives. And others.

I'm glad my days on the job are over. I wouldn't be allowed to use that skill today. It's called profiling, and in our suicidal politically correct world it's supposed to be a bad thing.

I just hope the cops, and the folks at the airports, use it anyway and lie about how they knew they had an A-hole on their hands.

We always did.

Trouble is, to be politically correct, they have to waste time checking grandma when they know they should be concentrating on young, middle-East males. Got to be politically correct. It's time we drop all that crap. Concentrate on the suspect group and if they don't like it, let 'em travel by camel next time.

FRED SCOTT

Fred Scott was a good 'ol boy from Helena, Georgia. What we call a Wide Body, he would've been an imposing presence on an NFL line any Sunday. He worked for the NPD in the 50's and early 60's, until he was shot in the arm by a fellow police officer, who, mentally ill and violent, also wounded Chief Ben Caruthers.

Fred loved country music and asked Sam Bass, a master musician and fellow cop, to teach him how to play the fiddle. Sam, who was later elected to the Florida Country Music Hall of Fame, obliged and pretty soon Fred was sawing out a near-recognizable Orange Blossom Special. Problem was Fred's wife couldn't tolerate the squeaks and squalls that are attendant to novice fiddle playing. She banned Fred to the front porch. Until the neighbors enjoyed about as much of his music as they could stand. So Fred moved into his car.

This could've been a good compromise today, but then, Fred's car was a VW--don't ask me how the giant even got into it--and it had no AC. But, you could see Fred in it, parked in front of his house, windows steamed and rolled up and the car bouncing up and down like a clogger at a hoedown.

The wounded arm troubled Fred the rest of his life, causing him to wake in the middle of the night with fearsome pains. It wasn't uncommon to run into him at one of the all-night burger joints, getting a little snack so he could go back to sleep. A snack for Fred was three hamburgers. For him, a burger was a two-bite hors d'oeuvre. Two bites. Washed it down with a couple large cokes. And, of course, some fries on the side.

Like many giants, he was gentle, kind, and soft spoken. We still miss him.

BIG ENOUGH TO SEE

My friend, Dave Dampier, just showed me a trick to viewing photos in the blog. Probably elsewhere, too. Put your cursor on the photo, a little hand will come up, left click the mouse. The picture will become full screen.

Thanks, Dave.

FOUR WHEEL GUNNERS AT THE RANGE

Ken Kitchell, Ed Helenek, Chief Ben Caruthers, and Bob Alexander

Looks like Chief Caruthers is carrying a S&W, 5" barrel .38 revolver. Probably the others are, too. The City furnished them.

Caruthers went on to retire from Hillsborough County, Kitchell and Alexander from the CCSO. Lost track of Helenek.

ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY

Hey, time do pass when you're havin' fun. It's been one year since I started this thing and I decided it was time to put it in book form. In the format for publishing I've selected the columns have added up to over 300 pages, about 50 more than I want for a book that size. So I'm editing.

The new blogs will sit come. Today is a photo from the later 60's. In the book these photos will be larger.

Have fun and enjoy a New Year and a New Chance to make it better.