When we moved to Colorado Springs a few years ago, one of the things that initially seemed attractive was the cozy size of it all. Less than half a million people, spread out along the front of Pike's Peak. Close to everything, running into familiar faces at every turn. The flipside to this was running into the law at every turn as well. A little too cozy.

The first run-in was in the summer of 1996. This was when I was working in the south side of town, and was able to meet Una regularly for lunch. We agreed to meet at El Nopal (a pretty good little tex-mex place) at noon. Since Una's lunch break was from twelve to one in the afternoon, she felt she had to hurry to get there in time. Sort of like how the police officer felt he had to pull her over for driving forty miles an hour in a school zone. I have to say that her explanation to me later was pretty interesting: she was Canadian. No, seriously, she claims that In Toronto, there aren't any flashing yellow lights in school zones, only crossing guards. If there's any Canadians out there who can vouch for the veracity of this, please email us and set the story straight. Needless to say, she got a ticket, and that was Una's rude awakening to justice, American-style.

After we moved into our house in the fall, we had just started getting used to the noises the house made at night (doesn't everyone's house wail and groan and tell you to get out?) there came a knock at the door late at night. We lay in the darkness for a moment, silently digesting the possible import of what the knock meant (plus, we were tired) before I got up to answer the door. Squinting without my glasses, I was confronted by a police officer bristling with radio and riot gear (well, that's what I remember, and I'm sticking to it). She asked if we had called for the police, and I answered (truthfully) that we had not. She stepped back and called the dispatcher - "315 East Cache La Poudre?" she asked. After a moment, the response was "315 East Dale", which is a block down from us. She thanked me, jumped in the cruiser, and roared off down the alleyway, while I thought to myself that boy, wasn't that interesting, and went back to bed.

The Christmas Eve Incident, 1995

The next run-in was in the spring of 1996, when things were not exactly well with our neighbors, but were getting better. They were watering their lawn on a regular basis (because, as we would later find out, they would be moving away soon, and wanted to get their yard looking somewhat presentable), and in a fit of matching the Smith's, we watered ours pretty regularly as well. Thus the garden hose and reel was usually left out in the driveway. One fine spring evening, as we were relaxing after dinner, came the dreaded knock-on-the-door. Standing at the door was a man and a woman, who asked the very peculiar question: "Are you missing your water hose?" After I figured out that they had seen someone leaving our general vicinity with a garden hose and reel, we walked around to the side of the house and discovered, lo and behold, that our garden hose and reel indeed was missing. They explained that they had had previous run-ins with the alleged perpetrator, and immediately had suspicions when they saw him trundling down the street with a garden hose and reel. They further explained that they were neighbors from a block away, and recognized us from our evening jogs.

Leaving their name and number, they went on their way. At a loss (literally and figuratively), I decided to call the police, and explained the situation to them . Maybe a half hour later, a cruiser came by, and the officer du jour took down the information without turning off the car engine, or even getting out. At that point, I realized that I didn't have the name of the low-life-scum-perpetrator, I didn't have the full names of the witnesses, and I didn't even know where they lived. All we had was a phone number, which turned out to be a pager number. Both me and the police officer, over the next few weeks, would attempt to get in contact with the couple, to no avail. They never provided any more information, and in fact, I never saw them again. After a few weeks of radio silence, the officer went away for a week-long vacation, and the case was quietly dropped at that point.

Now, it was a really minor event, but it was the principle of the whole thing that counted. It was a $15 water hose with a leaky $15 rolling reel, but the fact that someone would just take it was a violation of of our space. I mean, you never expect someone to take the windshield wipers off your car, but there it is, ripe for the taking. It still irks me to this day that the couple that witnessed the whole thing thought that it would be a neat thing to mention it to us, and then just blithely walk away from the whole mess. Sorry, but if you're going to involve yourself, then you better go all the way. If I ever see them again, that'll be the first thing I tell them: "hi, how are you, where the hell were you when the police called?"

Just a week ago, as I was taking a shower, I heard Una call out something about a drug bust going down on our front lawn. Logically, I assumed that I heard her wrong, so I said "what?" When she repeated herself, I knew this was a job for...Super-Una. I told her to go check out the scene, and not to be too rough with the suspects. By the time I got out of the shower and had fixed up my hair just so, things were pretty much over. According to this reporter's confidential sources (Una), it all started with shouting along the lines of: "Hands up!! Freeze!! Don't move!! On the ground!!" When she went outside for a peek, Una found there were two men face down on our freshly turned over lawn and one woman in handcuffs by a police car. The area was swarming with cops dressed in black SWAT-team-like uniforms, and there were two cruisers and vans on the scene. One of the police officers told Una that an undercover cop had made a drug deal on our front lawn, and the troops had been in place when the deal went down, ready to pounce. A small crowd had gathered, probably wondering what kind of strange shenanigans we were up to now. I can just picture a map of the Colorado Springs downtown area in the station house, with a bunch of red pins clustered around our house. We sure can pick them.