Mean men of the past
During my 32 years on the City of Rome Police Department, I met quite a few mean men. When I say mean, I am speaking of men who got pleasure out of hurting other people. There was those who started out in the local beer joints looking for someone to fight. They would go from one to the other looking for someone to beat up.
I never mention the last name of the people that I write about. I have been asked why and I tell them. I do not wish to inflict any kind of embarrassment ever.
When I went on the Police Department I was told about the mean ones. I was told about the fist-fighters, the knife-toters and the gun carriers. Some of the meanest were the fist-fighters. I had one to tell me that the sweetest sound to hear was the cracking of someone’s bone. There was quite a list of them back then.
I will tell you about one who was known only by his initials. No one ever called him by name, initials only. He was called L.G. L.G was a small man somewhere around 5-foot more or less. Weighed in at about 125 pounds. He was full of meanness and loved to fight. When you came up on him in a fight it would be with a big man. He told me he had never seen a big man that he didn’t want to whip. When the policeman went to get him, whether it was one or more, L.G. was ready to take them on.
My partner and I received a call that the ambulance was headed on a call where someone had been hit by a car. When we arrived, found the ambulance attendant in a ditch, working on some one. It was L.G.. he had been hit and knocked into the ditch by a car. It didn’t kill him but did a bang up job on him. He left Rome and moved to Alabama. He passed on a few years later. He was small but tough.
The meanest and trickiest one with a knife, we will call Will. Will in his mind was a Rambo. He thought he could take on an army of men. I saw him holding five or six at bay with his knife. I also saw several that he had cut with his knife. You could see him in his backyard with the knife, throwing it. I watched him and he very seldom missed the target.
This I didn’t know at the time, he worked in a shoe shop for awhile. While there he made himself a special holster that fit under his shirt. He had a good fight going on South Broad at East Main. I was riding with my partner named Pete. We had seen Will going down South Broad earlier and made some remarks to the effect, “There goes trouble.”
Pete and I came out of the patrol car with guns drawn. Will stood with the knife in hand pointed at a young man. The young man was crying, he was so scared. He turned with knife in hand and pointed it at us. Pete had him covered. I holstered my pistol and reached in and pulled out a sawed-off shotgun. Pete explained the facts of life to him. He laid the knife down on the street as though it was a baby. That was when we found the holster beneath his shirt.
Will disappeared from Rome after that incident. It was said that he joined the army and was killed in Viet Nam, I can’t say what happened to him. He left Rome and never came back as far as I know.
There was others who was just as mean as the ones I wrote about. The meaner the men it seemed that the harder was their end. It a known fact that the average man when faced with a life and death situation will usually not survive. It’s a situation that is not easy to face. Looking into a barrel of a gun or down the blade of a knife is not a place you want to be. Lonie Adcock of Rome is a retired Rome Police Department lieutenant. His latest book is “Fact or Fiction.”
I holstered my pistol and reached in and pulled out a sawed-off shotgun. Pete explained the facts of life to him. He laid the knife down on the street as though it was a baby.