On being arrested during Masters
Mark Twain wrote that golf is a good walk spoiled.
For me, one night in 1982 in Augusta, Ga., golf was a good bucket of Popeyes fried chicken spoiled.
That was my first time covering the Masters, and my first — and so far only — arrest.
It was also my first exposure to the real South. I checked into my hotel and was thirsty, so I drove a couple of blocks, crossed some railroad tracks and found a small neighborhood market.
I noticed the market had a dirt floor. Not a dirty floor, a dirt floor.
But I was there for the golf tourney, a historic and trippy spectacle in itself: the course, the culture, the justifiably famed peach cobbler in the Men’s Grill.
After Saturday’s third round, Craig Stadler is alone atop the leaderboard. The Walrus. I write my poetry, return to the hotel, pick up my girlfriend and we head out to find dinner in the rental car. It’s late and not much is open, so I am elated when I spot a Popeyes.
We buy a large bucket (I had worked hard) and two strawberry shakes, and head back to the hotel for the feast. I am sipping my shake when I pull up to a red light at a big intersection. The traffic light is dangling on a cable, another first for me. Wind is gusting, so the traffic light sways, bounces and twists. Is it green? I think so.
Bad guess. Other motorists see my mistake and stop. But one car making a left turn smashes flush into my door without even braking.
My girlfriend crashes hard against her door, springing it open. My side window shatters, spraying bits of glass, causing several minor but bleedy cuts around my forehead. My strawberry shake goes airborne and lands upsidedown on my head.
We jump out of the car and hurry to the side of the road, because the other driver is still driving. Foot on the gas, he pushes my car around in a circle, like he’s closing out the win in a demolition derby.
The cops arrive quickly, and an ambulance.
I feel fine, although my head is covered with strawberry shake, with trickles of blood and sparkles of glass. A paramedic hurries over to us. He glances at my car, notices the “Masters Media” parking sticker on the windshield, and opens with the obvious question:
“You think Stadler will hold that lead tomorrow?”
We briefly discuss golf, then we all decide that my girlfriend should go to the hospital to get checked out. I’ll sort out the car situation and meet her there.
“Wait,” I call out as she limps toward the ambulance, “take the chicken with you.”
I pick up the bucket from the back seat and pull out a drumstick. It is dusted with glass shards, gleaming like diamonds. I give the drumstick a shake, hoping the glass isn’t deeply embedded, but the crispy coating still glitters.
“No,” says my girlfriend, accusingly.
The police arrest the guy who hit me, who is high on multiple substances, it would turn out, and has two underage girls in his car.
One cop asks me for proof of insurance. I tell him it’s a rental car and I am covered by my own insurance, but I don’t have my insurance card with me.
“You have to prove insurance,” he says.
“I have the card at my hotel. Can you take me to get it?” “Nope. You’re under arrest.” He drives me to the Augusta hoosegow. A desk officer books me, as my cop stands by. An officer who was also at the accident scene arrives, looks at me curiously and asks my cop, “You arrested him?”
“Yeah, he’s got no proof of insurance.”
The other cop shakes his head, “You didn’t have to arrest him for that.” My cop shrugs. The young man who crashed into me is locked in a cell a few feet away. Maybe it’s the only cell, because the cops don’t lock me up. I feel kind of cheated out of the complete experience. I’m a writer. But I don’t object.
The kid is mad. His night of fun has been ruined by a dude who can’t read a swaying traffic signal. He is unhappy with me, swearing and threatening.
The desk cop tells me my bail is $250. I’ve got $20. So I use my one phone call to call my parents and ask them to wire me the dough.
A couple of hours later, I’m sprung, a free man. I catch a taxi to the hospital. As I walk the corridors searching for my girlfriend, people stare and gawk. I find her. Good news, nothing’s broken, although aches and pains would come later. She looks at me in horror.
“You’d better wash your head.”
The next day, Stadler held onto that lead.
(Technically, another golfer, Dan Pohl, caught the Walrus, who won a suddendeath playoff, but why spoil a good final line?)