From: pez@manhattan.com (Gizmo) Subject: The Adventures Of Smacks Past (Part 8) Driving For Dollars Date: 1996/09/20 newsgroups: alt.drugs.hard Driving For Dollars. 1983/84/85 The New York area has a lot of therapeautic communities, aka (TC'S.) These programs, which were mostly 24 hour live-in residential drug treatment facilities, and lasted 12 to 18 months or longer, were great at helping a recovering addict with any "legal problems" they might have. So if you had charges for possession, drug dealing, robbery, assault, you name it, these programs would really help you, by representing you in court and generally getting you some type of probation. Although the stipulation for probation was usually that you stay in the program and complete it, i.e. graduate. The alternative if you "split" the program was that you would violate the conditions of probation and have to serve the rest of the time in jail. Like any good junkie, I had more than enough legal issues going on at the time, but the one legal issue that no one seemed to know what to do with was my driving record. That's right, traffic tickets. I had lots of them. In fact I lost count a long time ago. It's not real original but somewhere during my last run, having had some earlier years experience driving taxi cabs in New York, I realized that I could use my car as "gypsy cab," and pick up money every day for drugs without doing anything too drastic to anyone. Well, just driving a taxi cab under the best of conditions puts you on the road about 20 times more than the average motorist. So I reasoned, 20 times as many chances to get pulled over for violating a traffic law. That's under the best of conditions. I was driving under the worst of conditions. No livery plates, no tax stamp, no medallian, either inproper of no insurance, etc. Any time I got tagged for operating a cab illegally like this, it would be no less than six or seven tickets! And this happened a number of times. Eventually I was literally driving without a license, insurance or registration. The long days of "hacking" my car as a gypsy cab wore my patience down to the bone. I would get to the point every day, in my effort to make enough money and to get enough stuff that I would disregard all the rules of driving. Illegal U-turns, running red lights, speeding etc., were things I did constantly. It's amazing I never had any accidents during this period. Obviously not having any money for anything other than drugs I never tried to pay any of these tickets. I never attempted to "appear in court," even though I was being summoned over and over again, for tickets that I didn't respond to. Penalties were added to the existing fines and that usually effectively doubled the fines. How many moving violations did I get during this period? I lost count. I had no way of knowing how bad it might be. I just knew that it was bad. Well, the humorous ending to this sad story happened like this. As I said, being in this rehab program, not only helped me get my life back together again, but it also helped me with the disposition of some of the more serious crimes I was arrested for when I was out running. But the drivers license, well...It looked like I was on my own. They basically said that driving records, licenses etc., was not something that important to getting clean. I guess the point being, that I could do fine without a license for a spell if I had to. Well, when I was at the end phase of this treatment program, when I had been working again for the last six months or so and I had accumulated some money, I decided to go the DMV on my own and see how bad it all was. I did at least have a letter from the program, so I hoped that at least I wouldn't be thrown in jail for "failing to appear" for over two or three years! Finally the day comes. I get off the train station and walk to the entrance to the DMV. I walk into the building and head for the DMV's office. After waiting in line for about 45 minutes, I finally get up to the window and the clerk asks for my summons. I tell her that I don't have any, briefly explain my situation and give her my name etc. She keys my name and social security number into the computer. I could swear I saw smoke pouring out of the terminal, but it just hums and shit, and finally she asks me if the information about my address is correct. I tell her yes. She proceeds to print out copies of the summonses. One by one the printer starts to clank and print out each summons that they have on me. One by one by one by one. One, two, three, five, ten minutes, and the damn thing is still printing. By now, everyone on either side of the clerks window are starting to raise an eyebrow or two at this Mega Printing Situation! Finally it's done. The clerk hands me the printout. Before she separates each summons I can't help but notice that the entire printout is taller than I am! And I'm over six feet tall!!! Yikes. 73 tickets is what the machine has found. At even $50 per ticket I'm about to go into shock. Shit, I knew I had a lot of them, but 73? Well, anyway, she separates them, hands them to me and motions for me to take them into courtroom 2 down the hall. After walking into the courtroom, and setting the pile of summonses down in the basket on the magistrates desk, I go and take a seat in the back of the courtroom. After about thirty more minutes, I hear my name being called. "Gizmo ______." "Gizmo ______." "Gizmo _____." I am completely embarrassed. Again she calls my name. "Gizmo ____, are you here? Is there a Gizmo ____ here?" Timidly I raise my hand and say in a soft low voice, "yes. yes my name is gizmo ______." A deadly silence comes over the courtroom. The magistrate asks me to stand up so she can see me. I stand up and try a weak smile. She looks at me for a few moments and then asks very seriously, "Mr. Gizmo ________, what happened?" I told her, - - - - - - - "I couldn't - Just Say No." Even though I'm pretty sure that not everyone could have gotten this, the entire courtroom including the magistrate bursts out laughing. After the laughter dies down, the magistrate tells me, "I'll have to wait until she finishes with everyone else, before she can get to me." The good news is that all the penalties and late fees are waived, and I'm not arrested. The bad news is that I had to come up with over $3,500! That's some traffic ticket. A year later I was able to go take the road test again and I got a new drivers license. In the next ten years I only got one ticket for running a red light. At this rate, if I live to be 1,000 years of age, I will have evened out the law of averages. Oh well, 950 years or so to go. Gizmo