After leaving Montana and moving to live with my sister in Benicia, California I still needed to finish High School. My sister's neighbor was a lady named Colleen Coll who played a huge part in my life. She gave us connections to get me enrolled in the C.E.T.A. program. Now that I think about it, I believe that she worked there.
Through CETA you could go to High School and get your diploma or go to Mare Island Naval Base and be trained as a machinist. I chose to go to High School which was a corner spot named New Youth Campus on the corner of Georgia and Marin Streets. Most of us students were not the best students. I think the teacher was scared of us and was always a bit jumpy. To get back to the rings... he was also a silversmith and made the rings that are shown in the picture which was my graduation picture. Yes I thought that I was cool. Really just a big dumb kid!
Fast forward a few years and I had gotten my first tattoo by Lyle Tuttle Jr. and we were on the way to Wyoming. I had my girl, my bike and my silver rings. What could possibly go wrong?
I shared some of my experiences in my last story but after my girl went back to California the little raggedy cabin by the lake was not my favorite place.
My brother and I were driving down the main street in Riverton one day and he told me that whatever I do....do not go in that bar. Of course that is exactly where I went the next Friday night. I was hanging out with a couple of cowboy looking gents. I didn't know that in their little drug addled little minds, they had decided that I was a narcotics officer. As the evening went on things got stranger and stranger. I was invited to take a drive and we would pick up a few things to partake in, why not? We went to a certain trailer house way out in the country and one guy went in and the other guy stayed in the car. Cars used to have large bench seats and I was sitting up front between these guys which wasn't that unusual back then.
When we stopped something felt wrong and I got in the back seat. The guy came back and got in the front, then turned around and put a gun to my head. He was pretty stirred up and was convinced that I was law enforcement. He and his friend were going to kill me and dump my body off by the country road we came in on. I was totally calm and pushed the barrel aside which really got the guy stirred. He pointed the gun back at my head. This took place several times until I convinced him to put the gun down and we would talk about it. When he put the gun down I jumped out of the car and ran behind a dumpster. They took off and here I was , in the middle of a trailer park way deep in the country and it was about 2 in the morning. Picture me as I look in the picture with a black leather jacket and ask yourself if you would let me in your house? I knocked on a door and the couple who lived there let me in and I called the Sheriff. I'm sure that the man of the house was armed and I don't blame him. The Sheriff came and took my story and gave me a ride back into town where my car was parked. Now get this....the guys were walking back into the bar ! I told the police that they were the ones who attempted to shoot me and they were arrested, When the Sheriff arrested them he asked them "why did you try to kill him" and their reply was " because we thought he was an undercover narc"!
It's whole other story but long haired guys don't fair well in court against cowboy drug dealers in Wyoming in the late 1970's. Yes, they got off Scott free.
So what has that got to do with rings? After the drug dealing cowboys attempted to assassinate me, they were released and threatened my life. My brother had a small .22 caliber revolver that he had disabled by filling the barrel with lead and breaking off the firing pin. He gave this to me for protection? I drilled out the barrel and made a firing pin from the tip of a small screw driver. Not super accurate but it worked. I used to lay on my bed and shoot at mice as they ran up and down the wall. I don't remember hitting one.....
One evening after the snow had come and the lake froze over I took a walk and met a couple of one percenter bikers who were ice fishing. They had an RV and after a while they invited me to come in and partake in some libations. As we sat there one of the guys was admiring my rings and asked to try one on. I gave it to him and he put it on his finger but he intended to to keep it. There was no way that I could have won in that situation so I made my excuses and went and got my .22 revolver. When I came back I told him that I wanted my ring back. I kept my hand on the pistol in my pocket. He became very indignant and said that I gave it to him and that we were brothers. I don't mean to make me out to be super brave or that I threatened them, I did not. I simple told him that I wanted my ring back. I'm sure that it was the grace of God in that situation as it could have went very badly. Probably for me. He finally gave it back and sorry there was no dramatic shoot out!
It amazes me to this day how someone could get killed over some silly thing but this is a true story and there were several bodies found by that road and others around Riverton and Lander Wyoming.
When I watch the show Longmire , I can totally relate......
