When I as around twenty, and still working form my father, I used his truck after work to move furniture and make a few extra bucks.

I had just met my first girlfriend and needed the extra money for obvious reasons.

I had a friend who worked with me once in a while. One day we worked for an elderly woman of some means who needed a table and chairs moved to her storage garage a few miles away. It was a perfect opportunity for all of us and we made a deal to help her for a few dollars. My friend and I have the same first name by the way. It becomes important later in this story.

We came back to her house after our work was finished there and we had gone to my father’s home and unloaded my dad’s truck. We then drove back to her house on the ocean. We loaded the furniture into the truck and were off. Simple, right?

She was to meet us at her storage garage. She gave us the address and we all drove off, expecting to have an exchange of services for money.

We arrived there before her and waited. This is long before cell phones and pagers, by the way. We waited for quite a long time. She seemed to have gotten lost or disappeared.

As we waited, the sun slowly set over the Pacific Ocean. My friend soon became restless and wandered around the area for a while. A police helicopter passed overhead several times. He dodged in under the roof eves and poked his head out gleefully. He was having a great time.

My friend thought it would be fun to hide under the eves of the garages and then pop out as the police passed overhead. I didn’t think so.

Eventually the woman appeared on foot just down below us and I walked down to meet her. Her car had stalled at the gas station just a few hundred yards away. I went back with her to see if I could get the car working. I found a loose battery cable and tightened the bolt and the car started.

As we arrived back at the storage garage, my friend was in the back of a patrol car, talking with the officers from the inside of the nearly closed window. I was stunned of course, but not as much as he was.

I got out of the woman’s car and asked the police what was up.

“This fellow was lurking around these garages. Is this your truck?

“Yes it is.”

“There are a lot of burglary tools inside of it. What’s that all about?”

“We do construction work with the truck. Those are my work tools.”

“Let me see your identification. What’s your name?”

“I’m R.C. Just like it says on my driver’s license,” I said as I handed it to him.

“This guy says his first name is R. also.”

“That is correct, we have the same first name.”

“That seems a little strange.”

“Well, I guess you might think that, but it is the truth. Just look at his license again.”

“Yes, you both have the same first names. Where did all this furniture come from?”

“It’s mine officer,” the lady standing next to me offered.

“Oh, I see. You know this goof got the helicopter pilot’s attention by acting suspicious down here and the pilot called us to investigate.”

“I’m not a bit surprised officer. I told him to stop it, but he just wouldn’t listen.”

“Well, It seems that the crazy story he gave us about moving furniture was true, after all. We’ll let you go this time, but don’t be going around doing stupid things like this again.”

“No sir, we won’t,” was my quick response.

They let my friend out out of the patrol car with a serious last look and removed the handcuffs on his wrists. They took off slowly after one more serious look at the both of us. Who knows what they thought about us idiots?

I’d like to say we stopped doing dumb stuff right then, but it took a few years for us to figure things out.

It all ended well and could have been a lot worse. Where and when have I said that before?

Anyway, the woman got her furniture moved and received a little free entertainment as well. My friend didn’t end up in the slammer and we made a few bucks.

If you liked this story, have a look at some of the stories here on my website and in my book of short stories, called “Sunrise Sunset” on Amazon or my other novels there as well. Have some fun.

This picture below is of me at around six. Yes, I was an angel and still am.