The Abduction Of Sammy Lee (1) The Abduction of Sammy Lee Small towns are not normally associated with crime waves. I suppose there are several theories as to why this is so. Perhaps, I have heard, it is associated with the blue-collar work ethic that is common in small towns. In the deep South it has sometimes been linked to the bible belt and the beliefs that are held by many of the local citizens. The fear of being publicly identified and the talked about at the barber shop may play a small part as well, because many Southerners still have an inherent, probably genetic, ability to feel shame. This tendency to avoid public ridicule at all costs, in some cases stems directly from real or imagined forebears that may have played some ignominious part in the war of Northern Aggression. At any rate, this avoidance of county wide (and if you really did something stupid, perhaps state-wide) infamy is not to be taken lightly in most small towns around where I grew up. They will put your picture in the local fish-wrapper in a hurry. Usually on page one. Since there are generally only about 4 pages involved in most of the local tribunes, you can see that this can account for a great percentage of what is talked about. Also since crime of any type is of such a rarity, the same story may be discussed over the course of several issues, sometimes spanning months. Somewhat like the old serial novels that were popular in the 40’s. I have my own personal theory on the low crime rate. I believe mostly it was due to the fact that there was really nothing of value to steal and it was usually too hot to commit any physical or violent type crimes. Also you had to consider the demographics of the region. We weren’t exactly swimming in criminal master mind types. Anybody that was smart enough and so inclined to pull off a major caper, had long since moved on to greener pastures that offered better pickings. Whatever the reasons, on the whole this worked out well for all of the people. The police and/or high sheriff could give good reports to their constituency at each election on the crime statistics that were way below the national average, tax dollars spent on law enforcement were almost non-existent (which tax payers tend to like a lot) and all the gendarmes could spend their time on really important matters such as training the school crossing guard or escorting the football team bus to away games. This also greatly reduced the amount of expensive training that was required and negated the need to hire pre-trained (some would substitute the word “competent” here) officers. This enabled the locals to elect and staff the enforcement departments at a bargain basement prices and also cut down on the amount of fancy, new-fangled gear that had to be purchased in the pursuit of orderliness. My town had, in its hey day, two, mostly functional police cars. They were always shiny, as washing them was one of the primary duties of Big Bob, the assistant police chief. I was never sure why we had an assistant police chief as we only had a force of three people. I think mostly it was because Bob was a former local high school football star that lasted almost through 2-a-days his first year at Tech before pursuing other career choices. After being with the department for 20 years it was sort of like an honorary title that the chief bestowed on him. It probably had something to do with the fact that Big Bob was the only local police that you actually ever saw do anything ( I suspect the chief felt a little guilty), and too it was a way for Bob to get his name spread around in the event that the chief ever moved on, or more likely died. The title of Assistant Chief would pretty much make him a shoo-in should a replacement ever be required. This left patrolman Sam Dewberry, a ten year veteran who was the role model for Barney Fife- and the chief, Ronald Evans Sr., to round out the rolls. Sam was so lost that Big Bob usually wouldn’t even let him wash the cars, and never let him drive one unless he was on vacation or fishing and forgot to hide the keys. If you have ever seen re-runs of the Andy Griffin show you know this guy well. This lack of perceived skill at operating a cruiser, did not however, stop him from operating the siren and waving like a mad man from the passenger window at each and every May Day parade that was ever held in our fair city. The chief was largely a man of mystery. He could be spotted around town on occasion always in uniform, and usually always looking spiffy. You could sometimes see his cruiser (always freshly washed and vacuumed) parked in front of the barbershop. I would go in sometimes but never witnessed the chief engaged in any type of debate or conversation as was the wont of most of the patrons. He would sometimes nod slowly, or grunt a time or two, and this would be the only indication that he would know that other people were talking at all. In later years I came to realize that this was the intelligence gathering function of the chief’s job. As a general rule in our town, if it had happened, was currently happening, or was going to happen at anytime in the foreseeable future, it was well known and under current analysis in the barber shop. We were probably the only town in South Georgia that had a retired CIA analyst posing as a barber. It seemed apparent that he had several retired cased officers on retainer to fill up the empty chairs in his shop save the one or two that were saved for customers. In between the sounds of the clipper you could hear post action recaps, potential political ramifications and the legal teams’ most likely response in the forthcoming days. Most often there was an extensively researched background and case history revolving around the felon du jour. Predictions of upcoming disaster or events were uncannily accurate. Occasional hemorrhoidal flare-ups were often predicted before the sufferer even knew that preparation-H would soon be required. In the time before CNN or cable was wide spread this was as good as it got. Had there been a large screen, a world map and a teleprompter you would not have noticed the difference. Of course, had CNN been on the air all these guys would have been offering expert commentary from Atlanta instead of in the barber shop. After a while the chief would usually rise, brush some imaginary crumbs from the front of his uniform and leave the shop. I supposed he was on his way to thwart criminals and keep the unsavory elements off the street. This was largely agreed upon in the shop as we certainly didn’t seem to have too many unsavory types lurking about. The chief would then lever his large frame behind the wheel of the cruiser, carefully place his mirrored sun glasses on his big noggin, and then after always carefully checking all of his rear-view mirrors for non-existent traffic, back the cruiser out into the street and make his rounds to wherever he felt the need to be. This was about the only place I ever spotted during most of my adolescence. As I said he was somewhat a man of mystery, but none the less charged with the operational efficiency of his department and the overall safety of our community. Sammy Lee on the other hand, was not mysterious in the least. What you saw was what you got. Which wasn’t much. The oldest 8th grader at H.T. Singleton Jr. High school, he was 16 or 17 (birth records are unclear on this fact) and about as skinny as a rail. He was fairly tall for his age, somewhere around 6 foot 2, but he was what my grandfather would have called “mostly hull”. Sammy was also about as sharp as the edge of town. None of which kept him from performing his duties at J’s in an exemplary fashion. He was the after school help that Charlie Bill had hired to do most of the sweeping and shelf stocking and whatever odds and ends CB could come up with to keep him busy. None of the tasks that Sammy Lee was asked to perform were exactly in the cranial stretching category so this worked out well for all parties concerned. CB considered this an act of charity and most people would have agreed as Sammy Lee was from a poor family and did not really have great future prospects in the business world or as a captain of local industry. CB let him work most Saturdays as that was when he would need someone to scoop up the crickets and count them out for anyone that was of a mind to see what the fish were doing that day. Sammy Lee was perpetually smiling and his customer relations function was counted as his strong suite. Always holding doors open and helping people with their bags (should anyone purchase a bag-full of anything at J’s) Sammy Lee was somewhat of a local presence around town. He was kind of like the old oak tree off of Highland Avenue, no one paid that much attention to it, but it always seemed to have been there and it was a nice thing to have in your town. When Sammy Lee wasn’t sweeping floors, scooping crickets or trying to convince customers that the red –wigglers in the old refrigerator had actually been alive yesterday, he was usually sitting on the old wrought iron patio set that was rusting away in the grass by the store. There had at one time been an umbrella- long since rotted away; the stem still poking up through the hole in the center of the table- that had offered some protection from the sun if you sat by the table. Sammy however, preferred the double-wide love seat that came with the set that CB had purchased from the furniture store. He would stretch his long thin frame out and often catch a nap after lunch, which was the slow time anyway. Most people were at lunch and anyone wanting crickets for later in the day, wouldn’t be around ‘til about 4:00. The semi-conscious state between sleep and wakefulness (often for some reason referred to as a cat nap) was where Sammy Lee was residing on the afternoon that all the safeguards broke down and my town became the center of the largest manhunt in 2 decades in South Georgia. For a short period of time our town lived with the fear and uncertainty that we were told was experienced daily by those living in the big city. To say that everyone was caught unprepared would be to engage in understatement of the highest degree. The intel-shop uptown had no wind of the impending crime spree and was analyzing the meat content of a couple of growling-burgers,*, the chief was inexplicably not on the scene when it hit the fan, Big Bob was topping up the various fluid levels on cruiser 2, CB (a former law man himself) was offering comparisons to Sam Dewberry while watching (*note: growling-burgers were a local delicacy so named because after eating one that was what your stomach was still doing) an Andy Griffin re-run, and Sammy Lee was, as stated previously, stretched out in all his glory trying to sleep through the heat of mid-day. Two avengers wearing black masquerade party type masks on their faces, forced their way past a mostly sleeping Sammy Lee, and came upon CB just about the time Aunt Bea was berating Opie for something. “Empty the register old man. Make it quick and no one gets hurt.” “Well hey there. Y’all doing alright? Weather suiting yuh? I tell you it’s been hot as a pot of collards these last couple of days. Get you a soda?” The gravity of the situation had not yet hit CB and he later recalled thinking that this was a couple of lost Yankees that didn’t know that Halloween was at the end of October in these parts. “I said empty the register you old fool. This is a stick-up.” This came from the assailant that the chief later labeled as “assailant one”. He was the taller of the two and seemed to be in charge. “You start filling up one of those bags with cash or I start pumping lead.” As he said this he revealed what the investigation later described as a Remington model 870 pump, sawn off. This seemed to bring CB back from Mayberry, but it still took him some moments to piece together that this was actually happening to him in his store. Somebody would damn well hear about this at the court-house. He would see to that. Damn skippy. That chief had better be busting the biggest pot patch in South Georgia and arresting some known fugitives about now or it would be an ugly election season. “Well alright. No need to be hateful about it. I see your gun. And a nice gun it is too I might add. Had one of those but broke the trigger guard off of it at a dove shoot 2 years ago and sold it to some bum. Would you be wanting big bills or small bills?” CB’s calm in the face of adversity kind of took assailant number two back a bit. “We want all the bills you moron. Bigguns and little ‘uns. I’m fixing to shoot your old ass if you don’t hustle a little bit back there. We got places to go.” “Well OK then- no need to get excited. Just wanted to help. We take customer service pretty darn seriously around this town.” That fool chief and his squad of imbeciles had just better be showing up here about now. Might be a special election. Before November. CB began to fill the bag with all the cash in the till. All $48.54 worth. He remembered the old .38 police special that he had somewhere under the counter. He hadn’t picked it up in so long he didn’t know if it was loaded or not. Where did I put that thing? My old ass indeed. We’ll see some shooting you bunch of freaks. Look like some kind of circus run aways. Probably from Leary. “Where’s the rest of it old man?” The thought of committing a crime for $48 was not appealing to assailant number one. “Open the safe.” “Well we ain’t got no safe. No sir I empty the register everyday and put it in the night deposit box as regular as rain. Don’t have no need for a safe. I’d probably forget how to open it any way.” “Don’t tell me that. I’m not playing here. You will open the safe or I will drill you.” Number one. “Well I guess you better get on with your drillin’ ‘cause there ain’t no safe. If I wasn’t fixing to get shot, that’ be pretty funny. A Safe. Hmmph!” CB finally spotted the old .38. Come to poppa. Couple of freaks. Fixing to do the world a favor. At this point CB, law man of days gone by, began faking a seizure. He proceeded to hawk up about 3 pounds of loogie, his eyes rolled back in his head and, he grabbed his chest, then fell right smack-dab in the middle of the floor. It was at this point that Sammy Lee wandered onto the scene, ever mindful of his customer service mission (even if it involved strangely dressed Yankees). “May I help y’all with that bag?” This interruption provided Charlie Bill with the opening he had been seeking and he almost pulled it off. He found the old .38 and with speed that belied his years, whipped it out and boldly thrust it in the direction of Number One as he had the only gun that CB could see. “Now what you got to say – moron? Who’s old ass you gonna shoot now? Let’s see if you can get a round off before I drop you like a bad habit. Sammy Lee will be sweepin’ your carcass up before the chief gets here.” CB was at this point rightfully feeling a little pride that all the old reflexes had not deserted him. The reflexes had not, but alas the eyesight had. While CB was puffing up a little over his maneuver, Number Two, off camera, had grabbed Sammy Lee around the throat and had a not so old and very big pistol firmly planted against Sammy Lee’s temple. “Drop it old man or the boy dies.” “Waste him – then I’ll get your partner.” CB wasn’t inclined to back down at this juncture.
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Copyright © 2004 Mark A Stuart |