Often seen in the local café, he got respect from both friends and those in awe of a badge and a gun. All the while his Doberman sat in his K-9 four-by-four, eyeing all passers-by malevolently. You didn’t want to be around if he let the dog out. But sometimes the hardened, serious lawman was unavoidable, like a cow around a blind turn. You’d better be legal, because old hawkeye never missed the chance for county revenue, and out in West County here, a lawman took what he could from both scofflaw and errant citizen.
It was a perfect autumn day on the coastal back roads. We were a BMW R100GS, Suzuki TL1000, Honda Hawk 650GT, a CBR600F2 and an unwieldy first iteration of the Victory cruiser that sounded like it might or might not have synchros in the gearbox. The new owner showed up with his new 700-pound agricultural implement, and immediately became a magnet for abuse.
Cruisers and sport bikes are like oil and water. The thing was huge, low, slow and heavy, and shifted loud enough to make even the new owner wince. And since he lagged far behind and was in back, it was obvious to the law that his plate had expired. And it so happened that paramilitary deputy Zorro was on duty that afternoon, and noticed the wrong color on Eugene’s tag. Bad luck and trouble for Victory boy that day, but the fun had just begun.
Zorro was on the side of the road overseeing the loading of a Chevy pickup with a burned-out cab but an intact bed. It was owned by two smudged “firewood pirates” who were deeply saddened by the loss of their money rig with which they stole dead trees along the back roads. You have to be fast to be a wood pirate, and you have to screw the cap back on the chainsaw gas can, or it’ll blow up when your cigarette accidentally lights it off. These two just stood there in silence, heads hung low, still in shock that they’d just escaped immolation. They awaited their uncertain future with a puddle of melted orange plastic that used to be a Husqvarna chainsaw at their feet, lucky to have evaded a painful death by Marlboro. After the fire was out, Zorro called the tow truck and waited, plenty of time to creatively give the wood-grubbers a series of law-based lectures and write citations that included the cost of each offense and the $400 tow.
That was the scene as we rounded a turn, seeing the winching of that charred hulk onto the flatbed tow truck. We skated past, but Zorro stopped Eugene with a wave of authority. We waited at the turnout a mile ahead, where you get a glimpse of the Tibetan Temple, when CBR rode up and announced, “Zorro’s impounding Eugene’s Harvester, I mean Victory.” We mounted up and rode back north, where we saw the victim Victory pilot helping Zorro shove this massive bike up an oily two-by-12 plank into the bed of the vulcanized, over-cooked Chevy. No sticker, no ride – pay your $900 fee and hitchhike home, citizen. Luckless and careless, realtor Eugene was the same as the wood thieves to the cop.
He tried to reason that he had the tag back at his shop; that the bike would be damaged, and transporting the machine like this was unsafe, especially because of the chainsaw oil slick in the pickup bed, an inch of slippery crushed bark, and there being no tie downs. Zorro was machine-like in his curt replies. He didn’t care. No, the luckless guy couldn’t simply ride the 12 miles back home and get the new sticker that was on his workbench. This was going to be by the book. Money would be paid for an offense this heinous. If the machine was dented, that was on the lawbreaker.
In the photos you can see the storm trooper visage of the deputy pushing the 700-pound behemoth across the warped, weathered, greasy plank into the ’73 pickup, while disgusted Eugene steers haplessly. The tow truck driver’s thinking, “Yes! Double fee for having to drive out here on this crappy, twisted narrow road for over an hour,” Zorro’s thinking, “Thinks he can pull one on Sonoma County’s finest law enforcement, does he? The law’s the law, and no way I’m waiting another two hours for the next tow truck.” And he didn’t care a fig if the $15,000 floor-boarder made it to the impound yard safely or not. Zorro had duly earned his renown for rough justice in these parts. He figured, “we’ll just piggyback the villains, and be on our way,” enforcing the letter of the law here on the no-painted-lines rural backroads. The two firewood thieves were in the tow truck, smoking up a storm, fretting about the future, glad they’d stolen the fire extinguisher from the Motel 6 in Rohnert Park when they went to town for supplies last week.
This absurdly comical melodrama played out as the sun sank west. It only made sense to us that our guy be allowed to just ride home, with a citation. But no, the law’s the law. Force him to load his expensive tractor into an absurd charred hulk, tie it down with ropes, side stand down so it’ll bend for sure. Did Eugene learn a lesson?
Maybe, but he no longer rides the Victory with us, being tired of the nicknames and degrading he got from then on. In fact he’s seldom seen these days, as is Zorro, who retired last year. So when your new tags arrive, stick ‘em on quickly or risk a dangerous and expensive trip to the impound yard. And you never know when the K9 unit will let the dog out.
Will Guyan lives in a BMW packing crate under a bridge.