Never a dull moment

Got to love life here on Milwaukee's fashionable East Side. Last night the bucolic peace that normally hangs over the greater Murray Hill-Lake Park-North Avenue-UWM metropolitan area was shattered by some crazy-ass shit. I was seated here in le maison, playing with Toshi (trying out some names for the new bucket of microchips) when I hear the high pitched squeal of brakes. Not unusual in and of itself mind you, but the squeal continued and got louder over several seconds. Then there was a crashing sound and people began shouting. At this point, in my capacity as self-appointed neighborhood busybody, I left my comfy cradle to go down to the street.

Pure bedlam awaited me when I got outside. This corky, who was driving an almost-new Corolla, was driving up Prospect when he slammed into an SUV on Bradford, apparently hard enough to set off his airbags. He continued undeterred towards Webster where he hit another car in the intersection. He got a few yards further on Prospect where he hit an oncoming car and then started banging between parked cars on either side of the street like they were paddles in a giant real-life game of pong. Needless to say surprise was a dominant emotion from the gathering crowd. We stood in disbelief at this moron as he continued to bounce off of one parked car after another for several minutes...then it got interesting.

The car finally stopped and one of the onlookers opened the door and reached into the car to pull out the keys. Corky was not pleased. He stumbled from the car demanding his keys. It should be said that balance was not this man's strong suit. He propped himself against one of the cars he hit (for the record Corky denied hitting anything, he even denied that his airbags had gone off) and continued to demand his keys from the onlooker. Fed up with the stalemate, Corky lunged himself at the man holding the keys and threw a punch, a punch that sailed through the air and failed to hit anything. At this point your humble reporter got involved with three other men and together we tackled Corky and held his writhing, cursing, and spitting form to the asphalt until the police came.

We held the man on the ground for more than 15 minutes. My first call to 911 happened about 10 minutes before we tackled the guy, and there were about 40 people standing around at this point, all of whom had cell phones that had been used to call the same number. Kudos to the MPD for their rapid response. Had Corky been black they would have rushed to the scene to get some wailing practice in, after all if you don't use your knightstick regularly you forget how.

Finally a squad car showed up, and Corky was cuffed and searched. I watched as a pill bottle and a bag of white powder were pulled from his pockets. Now I do not know what the white powder was. For all I know it could have been coke, heroin, or even Tide for that matter, but I will go so far as to guess that it was not the latter. Corky was placed in the back of a squad car, still writhing, cursing, and spitting. We all stayed around to give our statements to the police, and watched as the army of tow trucks moved in to remove all the immoblized cars. (the tow trucks were a hell of a lot faster then the cops were) Then it was a block party atmosphere minus the beer. We could have hit Corky up for his stock of refreshments but alas they were evidence now.

Everybody from the hood was there. The fresh off the boat couple from Australia, (welcome to America) the basement-dwelling yahoos from Elkhorn, plus the fat old guy from across the street who has no idea how to play guitar, but god forbid that stand in his way...were all in attendance. Nothing like a strung-out wacko behind the wheel to bring out neighborhood unity.

In the end all was well. Nobody had been injured and we all had a small break in what we all believed would be a dull night. And I went back to le maison thanking god that I had placed the Kimchee-powered love machine a block away on Stowell earlier that evening