Neighborhood Justice Team, UNITE!!!

Oh, how I wish I had the skills to present this in comic book form. Oh well.

Last night I was lounging in the yurt, drinking a beer and watching a movie. And yes, this is what passes for a quality Saturday night these days. Around 8:30, my phone rang. I checked the ID and it's Janice From Down the Road.  [I have to call her that because, very much to my amusement, every time she calls me up I answer "Hello?" and she invariably responds "Hi Cameron. It's Janice From Down the Road." One of these days I'll break down and tell her that not only do I know who it is from the caller ID, but that I think I only know two Janices in the world, and the other one doesn't know my phone number.]

"Hi Cameron. It's Janice From Down the Road. Look, I hate to bother you this late, but I thought I should call and give you a heads up."

Janice then told me about the ominous events unfolding within the neighborhood.



As I understand it, someone introducing himself as either "Ruiz" or "Luis" (or something along those lines) was making his way through the neighborhood making sales calls. Ok, nothing to usually get very alarmed about, granted. But what got everyone's hackles up was that this guy was going door-to-door on foot, in a rural area, after dark, selling hunting knives.

Now, I once had a brief stint selling knives, so I know how it goes. In today's difficult economic times, knife sales just aren't what they used to be, and if you're any kind of salesman at all, you know that sometimes you just have to do the legwork to meet that monthly sales quota (not that I ever did....I was terrible at selling knives). But even I know that you don't go walking down people's driveways in a remote area after dark loaded down with items that are primarily intended to kill and butcher things.  It will get people worked up.  That, and it's just not good manners.

Janice explained that it was probably just some guy trying to make ends meet, but some people she knows a few houses down were disturbed enough by this salesman (who had come down their driveway uninvited and then made his sales pitch) that they called the police, who were now patrolling the area looking for this guy.  At first blush, this may seem a bit extreme or paranoid, but to be fair there have been several thefts in the area, and we are 15-20 minutes out of town, so the people here have quite a network for looking out for each other, and with the growing meth problem, they've learned to just call the cops to deal with strangers.

At any rate, I told Janice that I'd go over and check out the house, just to be safe, and then I'd jump in the Mule and check on Mieko's place (she's a widow who lives across the road) and then I'd run up the road and check on some other properties where people weren't home.

Janice: "Check on the house?  Aren't Kalewa and Kaleo home?"

Cameron: "No, they're over on Oahu for the weekend."

Janice: "So you're there alone?"

Cameron: "Don't worry.  I'm here with my good pals Smith and Wesson."

[awkward pause]

Cameron: "Nah, just kidding.  I don't really have a gun.  But really, I'm fine."

So I hung up the phone, put the dogs up, threw on some shoes, and went out into the night.

*****************************************

When choosing a weapon to protect yourself on a farm, your choices are nearly endless.

The classic choice is the shovel, but if I've learned anything from Evil Dead 2, it's that shovels are really only effective against undead girlfriends.  Besides, half of the point of a weapon is the intimidation factor prior to even having to use the thing, and a shovel just isn't intimidating.  A pitchfork is a favorite option of mine, since it allows you to keep some distance while still being pretty effective.  But I'm not a fan of the jabbing approach, because you can't really get a lot of power behind it.  So I went with a potato rake.  It's basically a pitchfork with the tines bent at an angle like a rake.  With that I've got the reach, I've got a good swinging attack with lots of force behind it, and I can use the handle for blocking and such.  Or such would be my thoughts if I was a gladiator or in the middle of the zombie apocalypse or something, but in reality it was the scariest looking thing I could find near the yurt.

Stalking quietly over to the house in the dark, potato rake in hand, I was starting to get my adrenaline up a bit.  I don't know if it was heightened senses, or if it was something unique to last night, but there were TONS of frogs out last night.  I know there are always a lot around, as I can hear them chirping and croaking and making all kinds of noises all night long, but I've never seen so many out and about before.  So I got down the hill and across the bridge, and very quietly opened the gate.  I started up the road, and there's movement on my left! Frog.  I stayed off of the road, and headed towards the sugar cane, and I heard something by the house! Frog.  I quietly approached the house from below, and there's something on the deck! Cat.  I get to the house, check it out, and of course there was nothing there.  So I checked the garage next, then fired up the Mule, and backed out.

Pulling out of the garage, I realized that my potato rake was too long to be effective while in the Mule.  If a guy attacked me, I'd never be able to swing it around from there.  And from then on I'd be posthumously remembered as "That Guy Who Brought a Potato Rake to a Knife Fight."  And I didn't want that.  So, inspired by Danny Trejo and Robert Rodriguez, I grabbed a machete.

Driving up the driveway with my ever-growing collection of weapons, the thought occurred to me that if I do run into this guy, I'm totally hosed.  This guy is selling knives.  For all I know, Luis "The Blade" Ruiz is a professional knife-fighter.  I've never been in a knife fight.  In fact, all I really know about knife fights I learned from West Side Story, and I can't dance to save my life.  And in this case, I could be meaning that quite literally.  As I opened the gate at the top of the driveway, I figured that once I'm a Jet, I'm a Jet for life, and so I opted to keep my weapons and continue on my patrol.

I checked out Mieko's place first.  I saw that her lights were on, and I saw her walking around in her kitchen. Everything looked ok there.

Then I headed up the road to check out Earnhardt's Unibomber-style shack. Ok, ok, it's actually a 8'x16' one-room cabin that's quite comfortable, but I can't seem to stop calling it a Unibomber-style shack.  It's the romantic in me, I guess.  Anyway, I pulled into the drive, swung the Mule around so the headlights were on the door, and I tried the doorknob (potato rake in hand).  Locked.  "No sign of forced entry," as they say on all of the cop shows.

So I pulled the Mule around to the top of the drive so the headlights pointed into Hulama's garage area (since they're out of town at the moment as well).  As I was looking over their closed gate, trying to take notice anything out of place, up rolls Hawaii Five-O.  Two cruisers with lightbars blazing stop in front of me.  I take quick stock of the situation, and realize that I'm looking a touch suspicious, what with the peering into someone else's property with a machete on my lap and a (very ominous looking, of course) potato rake on the seat next to me.

Cop: "Sir, can I ask you a few questions?" (starts getting out of car)

Cameron: "Sure thing. But Janice From Down the Road called and told me what's going on, and I was just checking the properties of the absentee neighbors, you know, just to be safe and all." (lovingly pats potato rake)

Cop (having just exited car):  "Ok sir.  If you see anything, give us a call." (said while getting back into car)

And then they drove on up the road.  Just like that.  No questions, no second thoughts, no suspicions at all.  I'm guessing they got one good look at my potato rake and (correctly) deduced, "This is one guy who can take care of himself."

Then my phone rang.  It was Janice.

Cameron: "Hello?"

Janice: "Hi Cameron.  It's Janice From Down the Road again.  Just wanted to let you know that I talked with Mieko, and the knife guy did stop by her place, but he did so sometime before he stopped by the other neighbors' place, so it seems he was working his way down the hill, not up it."

And with that, the Upper Kaiwiki Road Threat Level was officially reduced from "Papaya Orange" to "Lilikoi Yellow".  I went back to the yurt, popped open another beer, and finished my movie.

Life Lessons Learned:
1. Always keep your potato rake handy
2. Frogs respond to neighborhood tension
3. I can really tell the longest stories about events during which nothing actually happens.