Leg irons & hippies

by Brad Nelson

Jethro and his little lady had ventured out of the hills, and had purchased a television set. The clerk handed Jethro a large, very long box, which was part of the deal. When he asked what it was for, he was told that it was the antenna, and that it went on the roof. He scowled at his wife, and grumbled that one thing always leads to another. Now, it seems, he had to put up a roof.

And so it was the summer we hauled to the Bell Brand Ranch. Only it was meeting one interesting person that led to meeting another.

One of my neighbors, who himself was pretty interesting, thought that I must be making a lot of money hauling hay. He put together a rather strange looking combination of hay truck, and went to hauling himself. He had been doing some custom haying, and one of his clients asked him to help move hay from one ranch to another. The Bell Brand, it seems, had sold the Bruneau, Idaho property, and was moving all the hay to their ranch in Nevada. Things were slow at the moment, so we went forth on a new adventure. We still had our regular customers to keep supplied, so we sometimes went to the Bell Brand Ranch with one truck, and sometimes with four.

My neighbor put a hired driver in his truck, and we had to put up with them for about four trips. This truck consisted of an older Freightliner single-axle tractor, a flat bed trailer, and a second trailer that when new, fifty years before had been a single axle lowboy equipment trailer. Now I’ve had to make do with what I could scrounge up most of my life, so I’m not knocking the combination. It’s just that on the way in to the Bell Brand, there was one hill on the gravel road that had the right combination of loose gravel and steep hill to befuddle the driver almost every trip. We would discover him about halfway up, spun out, as we were on our way back for another load. We would have to drop a trailer, drive the truck up in front of him, and pull him to the top. After about four trips, either the driver or the truck’s owner found other things to do, and left us to the haul.

From Bruneau, Idaho to the Bell Brand in Nevada, there was no way to avoid two weigh stations. The first was the Bliss, Idaho port of entry. It was usually busy, and also usually no trouble. The other was the Hollister port of entry, just south and then west of Twin Falls, Idaho. The first time I went through the Hollister scale, it was late enough to be totally dark outside. I crossed the scale, was given the green light to go about my business, but I parked anyway and hurried inside to use the restroom. When I emerged, there were about three southern truck drivers talking with the officer. Where these fellows came from, an officer, particularly an officer at a weigh station, was addressed with much “Yes, Sir!” and “No Sir!” and very little speaking unless spoken to.

To this day, I don’t know what possessed me to do what I did, but it happened. The officer called out to me when I emerged from the restroom. He asked if that was my hay truck. When I answered in the affirmative, he asked how much weight I was licensed for. When I replied that it was good for 96,000 pounds, he said that I was okay, I was only 88,000. I popped off with, “Yes, and since you gave me green lights when I crossed the scale, I figured that you were okay, too. That’s why I used the little room, instead of the top of your desk.” I said this in a pleasant tone of voice, and holding a straight face. The other drivers about fell over. Then the officer, one Dick Hooker, all but collapsed with laughter. The other drivers soon left, and Dick Hooker and I became good friends. He asked why I had said what I had when he spoke to me. My reply was just to shake up the southern drivers. “That you did,” he said. “I thought they were going to suck all the air out of the room. But how did you know I wouldn’t take offense?” I told him it hadn’t even crossed my mind.

Prior to his move to Idaho, Dick had been a deputy sheriff in northern California. He said that on most holiday weekends, the freeways heading north would be full of all manner of hippies and other undesirables, hitchhiking north. His last few days with the department would be the 4th of July, and about two days more. Every officer in his department, knowing that he was leaving, found time to pick up a few hitchhikers, cross to the south-bound side of the freeway, and instruct them to not came back. This usually resulted in a howl of protest, and “You can’t do that!” The officer(‘s) would state that they had just done that, and if there were any complaints, to be sure to mention that the officer that had sent them back south was “Dick Hooker”. Nice guys!

In one of the lumber camps lived a giant of a man, who the constabulary had learned to be wary of. But this fellow, for whatever reason, liked Dick Hooker. In the trunk of his patrol car Dick carried a set of leg irons for the occasions when this fellow would get his snoot wet, tear apart a couple of bars and have someone call for a little law and order. When the dispatcher found out who was causing the problem, they would find officer Hooker, and he would go to the scene alone. There he’d call this big fellow by name, and ask him what was going on. The big man would turn, shake his head, and say, “Oh, Dicky, I screw up again!” He’d then place his huge wrists together, and extend them toward officer Hooker, who would place the leg irons around his wrists, and take him off to the jail to sober up. Dick shook his head and said he had no idea why this fellow liked him. He had been out of the area one time, and others had to deal with this giant. It took most of a dozen officers, and three or four of them didn’t make it to work for a couple of days after the fray.

We brought Dick a bumper sticker one day. It said “Policemen like big busts’. He started laughing, and had to grab on to the wall to stand up before he was over it. He then apologized, and stated that the bumper sticker very excellently described his wife.

Returning from Nevada one night, we had a very drunk driver running with us. As we approached the Hollister scale, we called on the CB radio, and got Dick Hooker. I offered to use my truck to stop the drunk. Dick said that the offer was tempting, but please not to. The liability issue came first to his mind, and he didn’t want his friends in trouble. Unfortunately, there was not a patrol car in the area.

About four years later, my wife was asked by an associate of hers to cover for him at the police academy at Boise, Idaho long enough for him to go to a funeral. Elli taught CPR (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation) for him. I just happened upon her class roll, and found the name of Richard Hooker. I called the academy, and finally got my old friend on the phone. It seems that the state of Idaho had changed how things were done, and weigh station officers now had to be certified Idaho State Police officers. And so he was at the academy. He asked how I knew he was there. I told him I had seen his name on the class roll my wife had been teaching for the last couple of days. He said he hoped he wasn’t in trouble. Said they get kind of mouthy sometimes in class. I assured him that my wife had told me they were perfect gentlemen; especially when compared with some of the firemen she had taught over the years. Now, if anyone out there knows where Dick Hooker is, please tell him that I’m in the phone book, Royal City, Washington. And that I’m just as ornery as I used to be. PD