Minors Possessed

I've only been arrested once. For minor's in possession. April 4th, 1968, the night of the day Martin Luther King was killed.
We were young (not yet 21 obviously), pissed off, and like any righteous punk 20 year old, we decided to retaliate by getting drunk. A case of PBR's and a bottle of Sloe Gin (oh my god, i do not throw up, ever! One of the three times I did power barf was after drinking a pint of sloe gin, straight...I've haven't been able to suck on a Luden's cherry cough drop ever since then).
F Lot is a very distant parking lot on the Michigan State Campus. Linda Campbell, who tried to steal Jan's then boyfriend, Glen Champaigne..and his name isn't important, I just think it's a cool name, for a very uncool dude...had a car, parked in F Lot.
So the six of us: me, Jan, Cindy, Brian (the fly), Linda and Bob trudged across the back acreage behind Wilson and Wonders dorms, across the railroad tracks (which is where I upchucked the Sloe Gin a few weeks earlier) carrying our case of beer, our sloe gin, our cigarettes and mighty heavy hearts at the news of the day.
Six of us in a car, three in front, three in back, case of beer under the feet of the back seat folk.
Pop a lid, down the beer, throw the can out the window (very windy night, just before littering became a crime, but what the hell, Martin Luther King was dead, talk about crime)and before long there was this boat of a car with about a dozen cans of empties blowing on the asphalt, back and forth, back and forth, it almost sounded like a fucking wind chime.
Then I noticed a car pull in front of our car. Very strange place to park? Did I mention we were now drunk? How did they expect us to get out?
No problem when we want to leave we'll just back out...except there was a car behind us too. What the fuck?! That's when the red and blues started going.
Then we realized that they were campus police and they were blocking us in on purpose (did I mention we were drunk)?
Suddenly everyone in the car seemed very concerned about hiding the beer that hadn't been drunk and as for those that were open, well we just dumped them on the floor boards and started putting them under the seats.
DID I MENTION ABOUT THE EMPTIES BLOWING IN THE WIND OUTSIDE THE CAR, AND THAT WE WERE DRUNK?
Nothing much made sense after that. It was Linda's car and she kept saying 'but I'm 21 tomorrow. My birthday's tomorrow.' And the cop (and i use the term loosely, half of these guys were Campus fucking police, some of them were probably in some our classes...they were like Play School police) said back to her, 'well, then lucky for you we caught you tonight or we'd also bust you for aiding and abetting.' Aiding and abetting beer? Wow, cool man.
And then I remember thinking I'd pull the MLK card. "Hey man, we were just bummed because of Martin Luther King. Can't you understand. It's just such a bummer."
Which was the wrong thing to say, because that's exactly why the campus and city police were patrolling the lots and streets, to squelch any uprisings or revolutions or black power movements (not a black face among us), and what these little play police didn't understand is that in a short six months or so we would be facing them, on the streets and in marches and with tear gas and flower power as weapons, but for now it was all about the beer.
Silly.
Packed into the two police cars. Jan and Cindy and I got to ride in the one with lights. The whole thing was strangely calming, surreal. Maybe it was because Martin had just been gunned down, and this was so insignificant in comparison. Maybe because we had enough of a buzz on, we were somewhat numb to the consequences.
And oh yes, there were going to be consequences dammit! Fingerprinted. That was odd. And then each of us sitting with our own play police being interviewed. What were we doing out so late? What did we have in mind after we were finished with the beer we had? Who bought the beer for us? Did we have any alias's? Hmmm, let's see. None of us are alcoholics and we tend to drink later in the day. Buying some more beer. A guy standing outside the liquor store. Pollack. Fly. Rembo...and then I think we stopped because we were cracking up and the play police were getting mad because we were not taking their play uniforms and play questions seriously.
"o.k. kids, you can go. We'll send you your court date in a week."
Kids? This from a guy who was more then likely carrying his own fake i.d.
Yep, my first brush with the law, unless you count in high school when a group of us got caught trespassing on the grounds of Maybury Sanitarium, but that's another story.
No, this was our first real brush with being arrested and all.
What followed was my being Vice President of the Student Mobilization Committee. Organizing anti-war protests and marches on city capitals, not the least of which the Moratorium to End the War in Viet-nam. Getting gassed. Having a car drive into the middle of a march on the capitol of East Lansing, right in front of us, and take out a mom and her kid in a stroller. Many protests and many pictures later and finding out that I was one of the lucky ones to hit Nixon's FBI and CIA watch list. They had my name, my rank and picture.
But getting arrested. Only once. For drinking beer before I was 21. Go figure.