The Creature

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IV

If there is one humorous aspect of the American scene it is that of rural late enforcement agencies. The township officers of the Diggins area were not different in this respect and all of them may have been movie characters with a little coaching. If a criminal were ever apprehended in our township it was mostly by accident rather than on purpose.

I worried that the police might come across Kong since they were to keep an eye on the place for me. I had had three burglaries up to the time I met Kong. At this writing there are now four burglaries. When I seriously reflected on the police running into Kong I know that it was out of the question since they spent most of their time hot-rodding in the township car and drinking coffee in the only coffee shop of the area.

Each time the place was burglarized I dutifully reported it to the police who came out after a day or two to list the items taken. The township police had an unlisted number and the only way a citizen could get them was to call the county police who would contact the township police. Then the township police would contact me and we would agree to meet out at the cabin and we would compile the list of loot. I missed such trite items as canned food, knives, spoons, bedding, pictures from the walls, and half broken tools. Once they did get an old TV set from me as well as two half hearted radios.

The investigating officers consisted of a part time officer who was partly on welfare and who was once convicted of stripping a stolen car prior to being hired. The other was a full time officer who had nine children and who also supplemented his income with welfare. No wonder police are open to graft I have always had the sneaking suspicion that the police were somehow involved with the burglaries. For some reason the burglars never took an antique sign I had which pictured a horse and the message 'TRAVELERS REST 1762 ENTERTAINMENT FOR MAN AND BEAST.' The first time the police arrived, the younger wondered the same thing. On the next investigation he said that they "didn't get that sign yet" and on the third he suggested that I take the sign out of the cabin.

Stolen and stripped cars were always turning up around the cabin area but only twice on my property. The hulks of the cars would lie around for about a month and finally the township would send out a crew to remove the carcasses. Nothing about the cars or the burglaries ever appeared in the tricounties newspaper although crimes in other areas were dutifully reported.

Aside from the burglaries the area of the Diggins was constantly bombarded with litter at the road entrance. One weekend I counted eleven different brands of beer from the cans and bottles strewn about. People often stopped by the spring area to wash their cars and load up plastic jugs with spring water. This area was deluged with an array of paper napkins from Winkys and the Dairy Queen. Empty pizza cartons were piled up each week end as if they were sold at the spring. Plastic jugs littered the ground. About every two weeks in the summer I would gather this debris and build a fire with them. The cans and bottles I would take to the Diggins and throw into a hole that I dug for this purpose.

On one occasion I had a fire going by the spring and was gathering debris when a middle aged couple with a teen aged daughter stopped and filled up their plastic jugs with water. As they got into their car ready to leave the daughter threw a paper hag out the window into the spring. They drove away without speaking to me and I hollered "litterbug" after them.

It was a constant battle with these litter bugs. I once put a sign 'IF YOU CONTINUE TO LITTER I WILL DESTROY THIS SPRING' beside the pipe outlet for the water. Thinking myself clever I signed it 'THE TROLL' since in my thinking all springs were guarded by trolls. This didn't work. This was followed by another sign 'PIGS LEAVE LITTER' but this too made no impression. I tried to get the township commissioners to post 'NO DUMPING HEALTH DEPARTMENT' signs but their promises were never fulfilled. I was probably considered a nuisance by the township commissioners.

I had my property posted with 'NO HUNTING' signs but this didn't stop trespassers and so I switched signs to include all trespassers. Even though the Diggins was off the beaten path there was a steady flow of traffic on the road on week ends. I once came across a man in a sports car sighting his rifle up into the cowfield and adjusting the scope. His wife sat calmly in the driver's seat. I'm not sure it was his wife but that identification is close enough for my purposes here. As I pulled up alongside of him I asked him what he was doing and he answered that "there was something moving up there in the field." This was before I met Kong. I assured the man that I was glad it wasn't me up there as he fired two quick rounds, I asked him what it was he shot and he answered that he didn't know but it got away. He went around to the passenger seat, got in, and they drove away. I walked up into the field but could see nothing.

On one of the occasions when I reported the stripping of a car the police investigation had been a week in coming. During the course of the examination the older policeman took from the car a rear view mirror which was overlooked by the strippers. The mirror was placed in the hack seat of the squad car. The squad car itself was a piece of junk. I believe it was an old Oldsmobile which didn't appear to be able to reach fifty miles an hour going downhill. Anyway this was the law with which I had to contend and on which I had to depend.

It was not unusual to come to the cabin and find that the putty from a window was slowly being removed or that the door lock was being jimmied with sharp instruments. The stripping around the doors was often pried away from the frame. Anything lying loose around the cabin would be removed if it lay there for two weeks. Nothing was safe.

Another danger that was posed was that of burning. Shortly before I met Kong there occurred several burnings in the township area of the Diggins. These were obviously arson and the time of the fires were early in the morning. It was startling to be driving on the main road toward the property and see the remains of a burnt out barn smoldering, a barn that had stood the day before.

My closest neighbors thought this was the work of the junior of the area. They were an active group in their early twenties and late teens and the neighbors believed they started the fires to get some practice in fire fighting. If this was the case, then they really needed the practice since most of the buildings burned to the ground. The buildings were mostly garages, barns, and unoccupied old houses. How the Diggins escaped this I do not know. But even as I write these lines I expect that someone may be out there trying to put a torch to the place. I think I will move my typing equipment out there and finish writing this at the cabin.

I once found a pack of burnt out matches and an empty six pack of beer under the porch of the cabin. I don't know if this was an attempt to set the cabin on fire or not since it would be an easy thing to do. I keep wood stacked under it and any light would send it up in smoke. When I brought this to the attention of the police, all the old officer could say was "probably some kids foolin' around."

The highlight of my war with the litterbugs, trespassers, and burglars came when I found an old car door about ten feet up the road into the Diggins property. It was painted pink and had a Bugs Bunny decale on the middle of it. Ha ha, thought I, I have them now. I went to the township building about ten miles away and sought out the constable.

The two township police officers were a comedy team but the constable was the master. He was a tall portly fellow with graying hair and an odor of stale cigarettes about him. The whiskey smell coming from him offset the tobacco odor nicely. He was usually holed up in the township building where he passed the time talking to the grading equipment driver who never seemed to be out on duty. It was a slow and easy way of life and nothing rattled him too much. Dog violations were his specialty.

I believed that even in his lethargic state the constable would have noticed the owner of a pink car with a Bugs Bunny decale on it. When I presented him with the evidence all he could say was, "hell, there must be a least a dozen cars like that around here." I gave up and decided to protect my property by being there often and policing the grounds for litter myself.

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