The Colossus of Cops

Pete hired on to the police department of Hallsville, Missouri, a tiny town north of Columbia.  He was a topic of conversation from the moment he arrived.  He was amiable and quickly became a friend to folks in the area.  But there was one of Pete’s attributes that made him stand out in any crowd.

Pete was a giant.

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According to my research, the line between normal man and giant is seven feet.  That put Pete right into the category usually associated with people named Goliath or Andre.

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I was hanging out at the Route Z Conoco one day, talking to the owners Ronnie and Randy while they worked on my Isuzu P’up when Huck came in.

Everybody greeted the older guy before he launched into a story, “Y’all seen that new cop in Hallsville?”

Ronnie shook his head, “No.  I hear he’s pretty tall.”

Huck nodded vigorously.  “I’ll SAY he’s tall.  I hadn’t heard about him till th’other night I was drivin’ through Hallsville when I saw lights flashing behind me.  I pulled over into the Casey’s parking lot and he pulled in behind me so I knew it was me he was after.

“I looked in my mirror and he started gettin’ out of his car.  I leaned over and got my registration out of the glove box and when I looked back in the mirror again he just KEPT ON gettin’ out!  He come up beside me and I looked out the window direckly at his LEGS!

“He bent WAY over and told me I had a tail light out and to get it fixed.  Then he let me go.”

As it turned out, the new policeman was named Pete, and he was seven feet tall.

Yep, SEVEN FEET TALL.

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As I said, Pete had a gentle, friendly nature.  He didn’t have a bodybuilder’s physique or anything, but he was TALL and appropriately big.  Just walking onto the scene was enough to change the attitude of any but the most drug-addled criminal.

His size didn’t always work in his favor however.

Like this one time.

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Mickey owned and operated the hardware/auto parts store and auto repair shop in Hallsville.  One day I was in there picking up some needed hardware.  I was standing at the checkout when I heard the door open behind me.  I glanced back and saw Pete coming in.

He walked up to the counter and stood quietly, waiting his turn.

Now, Mickey was my size so there we stood, with Pete towering about a foot-and-a –half over both of us.

Pete nodded, “How y’all doin’ today?”

I returned his greeting and Mickey said, “Better than you, from the looks of things.”

Pete chuckled politely.

I looked up to see that the big man was sporting a pair of matching shiners.  The angry bruises around his eyes made him resemble a uniformed raccoon.

Mickey suppressed a smile as he commented, “What happened to you, Pete.  What kind of man does it take to give a monster like you two black eyes?”

Pete grimace just a little and began, “I got a domestic disturbance call last night…”

Mickey, who doubled as a member of the town’s Emergency Medical Team, nodded, “I heard it on my scanner just before I got off duty.  Bubba and Billie Sue (not their real names) were fightin’ again.”

Pete grimaced again.  As a policeman he was not allowed to reveal the names of “suspects.”  He coughed and cleared his throat to cover his lack of response, then continued, “Well, I parked in front of their trailer, went through all the trash in the yard and up on the porch, and knocked on the door.”

He added, “Y’all know, I hate house trailers.”

Mickey and I were way ahead of him.

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House trailers, especially in those days, had low ceilings.  We also knew that the trailer Bubba and Billie Sue lived in had ceilings below average, even for a house trailer.

Now, that wasn’t a difficulty for Bubba and Billie Sue.  Bubba was barely over five feet tall and Billie Sue was about the same, but outweighed her husband by a factor of two.  Bubba might have weighed 110 pounds soaking wet, but he had quite a reputation for being wiry and scrappy.  And he had a temperament to maximize that.

I’m sure Mickey was thinking the same as me.  A seven-foot-tall man with shoes on would have a tough time maneuvering in a room with below seven foot ceilings.

Bubba wasn’t the kind to ignore an advantage like that.

Mickey spoke before I could, “Bubba did that to you?”

Pete grimaced again.

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Pete explained, “The female resident opened the door and started right in tellin’ me that her husband was drunk and had started complainin’ about the dinner of cold instant oatmeal, Kool Aide, and Pop Tarts she had served for dinner and started yellin’ at her that it wasn’t fit for a dog.

“To prove that, he’d thrown it out through the screen door, without openin’ it of course. 

“Now, she had a beer bottle in her hand and was tellin’ me what she was goin’ to do to her husband with it if he kept gripin’ at her.  He was in the background hollerin’ about what he was goin’ to do to her if she didn’t shut up.”

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Pete had our full attention by now.  We couldn’t say a word as we waited to hear what happened next.

“The man hollered out that, if she would come back in, he would teach her how to show a man respect, so of course she turned around and went back inside.

“I grabbed the screen door to keep if from slammin’ shut and ducked to go through the doorway.

“I stepped through the door and went to stand up once I got in.”

He hesitated for just a moment before he said, “That’s when I realized they had their ceiling fan turned on…”

He hesitated again.  “…and it was on high.”

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Mickey had his hand over his mouth trying to keep from laughing.  I was doing a better job controlling myself…then Pete went on with his story.

“That blamed fan was whacking me in the face so fast I thought somebody was assaultin’ me with something.  I was wavin’ my arms, tryin’ to defend myself when I realized what it was and did the only think I could do.  I crouched down and backed out the door and out on the porch.  My balance was off and my brain was concentratin’ on the pain so it didn’t occur to me that there wasn’t a lot of porch out there.  I backed up until I hit the only piece of railing that was still up and flipped completely over backwards and landed in the yard, right on top of the instant oatmeal, Kool Aide, and Pop Tarts.”

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Mickey was gagging on his laughter by now but took a breath and asked, “What did Bubba and Billie Sue do?”

Pete said, “They were laughin’ so hard they couldn’t hardly stand up.  I was sittin’ there in the yard, wearin’ oatmeal, Kool Aide, and Pop Tarts, in the middle of all the yard trash, and realized I’d just got my butt kicked by a ceiling fan, and I started laughing too.  I got up, cleaned myself off as best I could, and told them to find a way to get along or I’d be back.  Then I left.”

I asked, “Why didn’t you give ‘em a ticket?”

Pete broke out into a grin, “For what, assault with a home appliance?”

I guess he had a point.

I suppose there are advantages to being short after all.

Just sayin’.

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