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In 1979 I got arrested for "littering" in a county park. It was at the Fingers Lakes just north of Columbia. It was this old strip mining plot of land, and my friend Blair (who was a Columbia Local) took me an a couple other guys up there to drink and smoke and shoot bottle rockets. This was a couple days before the fourth of July. The strip pits were full of water. You could shoot off a bottle rocket, and if it fired before it hit the water, it would go down into the strip pit, blow up under water, and light up the whole pit. Very cool, right? So after about an hour, this Jeep Wagoneer with a canoe on the top comes up the road. We thought it was some guy out there who must have been boating. it was a Boone County Park Ranger. He said we were trespassing on County Land. Blair said "since when?" Ranger said "This area became designated as a future Boone County Park last Monday. Have you boys been drinking?" He called another deputy, another cop car shows up, and we were all arrested for trespassing and littering." They took us to the Boone County Jail and we sat for about four hours until Blair's Dad (A Columbia Doctor) bailed us out. It cost me $200, which is 1979 was a LOT of money.
Anyway, that's the only time I was locked up. Ironically, I spent a LOT of nights in both the Boone County Jail and the Columbia City Jail when I was a reporter. We'd have to go check the booking blotter in the wee hours of the morning to see if anything happened overnight before the early morning newscasts.
One of my college DJ pals years later became the Columbia Chief of Police. He's retired now, and works part time as a bicycle cop on the KATY trail near Columbia.
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