Or me.
Keith's accumulated a variety of nicknames through the years, from Bubba to Biscuit to Keefus and plain old KC. He's a good-natured man with a hearty laugh, who now makes his way in this world as a registered nurse.
That's right, RN. After being forced to retire from law enforcement due to a rare blood condition, KC went back to college and earned a nursing degree. He's in the Oncology department at an area hospital, caring for patients requiring chemotherapy, among other things.
My old pal, an avid golfer, tore his left shoulder muscle swinging a golf club last summer and recently had it repaired; he's wearing a wedged sling on his left arm, one that holds his forearm away from his body so as to aid the repaired muscle's proper healing. I had the same procedure back in '17 on my right shoulder and it's no fun.
Getting old, you see, isn't for sissies.
Knowing he can't yet drive, I picked him up yesterday for an excursion to the city building and then lunch at Coney Island on the square. I figured I'd give his lovely wife Lisa a little break from having KC under foot around the house as he recuperates.
We never made it to lunch.
The purpose of our trip to Mansfield's muni building was to visit with a few long-time friends not yet retired, folks we'd both worked with back in the day and hadn't seen for awhile.
I parked my GMC in the lower east lot at a metered space, immediately realizing I had absolutely no change with which to feed it. "Hey, the next one beside it has an hour and twenty-four minutes left on it", Keith observed, and so I maneuvered into that spot. Problem solved.
Not. Keith and I spent well over twice that amount of time wandering the halls of MPD.
Our first stop was the second floor where command staff offices are. The first thing I missed was seeing Nettie Ballard's always-smiling face behind the glass at the receptionist's desk. It also required an explanation of who we were and why we were there to the gal manning that post, as she had no idea of the years KC and I had put in at the police department.
Before it was said and done, we were in Assistant Chief Joe Petrycki's office, along with Chief Keith Porch, Captain Shari Robertson, Captain Doug Noblet, Lt. Jason Bammann and Lt. Mike Napier. Needless to say, stories, laughter and good-natured ribbing were in abundance. A little pang of nostalgia began to faintly glow deep in my chest, much like the coals of a beginning fire in the heat stove that sits in my living room here at Black Gold Homestead. And, just as in the stove, it would eventually glow white-hot.
Shari, or 'Sis', as I call her, joined us as we moved from place to place, after Keith and I first made a stop in the radio rom. Lewanda Curry was the lone person the two of us knew in the communications center and, being her usual self, smilingly chided us for not bringing her an order of hot wings. Apparently Lew has moved on from the apple-pie-and-ice-cream she used to ask for when I was a patrol sergeant back in the mid-90s. She's one of those bubbly gals who can eat anything and not gain an ounce.
Next stop was the detective bureau, where we found Dave Scheurer, still plugging away as he nears retirement; then it was into the elevator to the first floor. Would we even know anyone there anymore?
Of course we would, as we invaded the sanctum known as the traffic bureau. Sgt. Paul Lumadue was in, dealing with the ever-present myriad of tasks and complaints over parking tickets and faulty meters. Shari then led us pair of dinosaurs through the brown, electronically-locked heavy steel door into the patrol bureau; this was where things got a little weird. Nearly every face roaming those halls was unbeknownst to us, though Shari made sure to introduce Keith and I and explain that we'd been sergeants back in the day. She got into the routine of asking each officer, as we were shaking hands with them, what their badge number was, then telling them mine had been 135 and KC's 139. Those kids' badges ranged anywhere from the mid-200s to 313, the newest guy on the department. Talk about feeling ancient...some of those folks hadn't been born yet when the two of us were driving patrol cars and locking up mopes.
We ran into Tony Tambasco, who still runs the crime lab and was always a part of our Pittsburgh hockey trip crews, and Cindy Reed, a lab technician Keith and I had both worked with who still loves to laugh. Even Sgt. Andy Boor, who I worked with on night shift, made an appearance and it was great seeing him after all these years.
Stopping in Capt. Doug Noblet's office (he's the patrol bureau commander now) to chat a little further, I was shocked to see a guy who'd been on my afternoon shift squad in the late 1990s, now-Lieutenant Chad Brubaker, one of the funniest guys I know. I say 'shocked' because Chad had undergone an extensive body transition since I'd last seen him and had lost probably sixty or 70 pounds. Chad's the day shift watch commander.
On the way back to tour where the old jail had been, I told Keith we had to make a swing through the locker room. I wondered aloud if the linoleum that had been on the floor back when he and I had lockers next to each other was still there; you see, KC once had his revolver go off (that's how long it's been, we were still carrying Smith and Wesson 686 wheel guns) as he checked the firing pin function, a routine all of us did prior to holstering and hitting the streets. The accidental discharge caused his bullet to gouge out a chunk of linoleum before it ricocheted into the ceiling at the far end of the locker room.
It was still there, that gouge, and I had KC pose for a picture with it. He's taken a lot of good-natured heat due to that incident over the years and I just couldn't pass up the photo op.
A little further down the hall and a sharp right turn took us into the cell area....or at least where they used to be. Part of the jail had been merged with Tony's crime lab; it's also where we found Jerry Botdorf. Jerry started out as a dispatcher/police aide way back when; he took the city's civil service test for the police department, finished very high and, for reasons that are still a mystery to me, was passed over. That had to be a crushing blow, but I'll say this: he sure bounced back much higher than those who rejected him. Jerry went on to spend a career in the Ohio State Highway Patrol, rising to the rank of Lieutenant before retiring, then was hired by the city to run its communications center. He's since transferred to the crime lab. "Less stress", he laughingly told us.
The rest of the old jail had been converted to a gym area; the big 16-man cell, the felony cell and the women's cell were all gone. Both individual cells were still standing, now securing equipment used by special operations, and the stark, dank drunk tank was still there, with its concrete cots and floor sloped to a center drain.
KC and I both posed for pictures with Shari in the jail control room, which used to be called the 'inner jail', then strolled back up the hallway into the roll call room, where we'd gather at the beginning of a shift to go over incident reports from the preceding two shifts and bulletins and memos from the second floor. It, too, had undergone a transformation of sorts. The bulletin board was still there but our open mail boxes had been replaced by individual metal ones which could be locked. A large-screen digital monitor was mounted on a wall behind a small, elevated platform where shift supervisors sit while reading the reports aloud.
Being in that room, where every shift of my time at Mansfield PD started, brought back a flood of memories: Brian Kerr, a muscular Marine, darting from his chair and flying across the room after the praying mantis we'd found on the brick wall in the police compound crawled up out of his styrofoam coffee cup....he was scared to death of bugs. All of the jokes now-retired Sgt. Jan Wendling told. Lt. Billy Howard's yearly fall admonishment to be careful driving on wet, leaf-covered roadways because they'd be just as slick as ice. Capt. Dan Brant's ninety-minute long roll calls. Being disgusted when a fellow officer sitting in front of me obviously hadn't showered before work, as she had a thick, sweaty dirt streak on the back of her neck. Another officer (male) who had an aversion to soap and water, generally smelling bad. Being able to smoke in roll call. I could go on, but maybe that'll be for another blog post.
The last stop on our trip down memory lane was on the 9th floor, in Safety Director Lori Cope's office. Lori, a few decades ago, was an auxiliary officer who came in and rode patrol with me; we've been friends ever since. She was hired by the police department and served 9 years, I believe, before being forced into early retirement due to injuries received in a cruiser accident.
KC and I cooled our heels as we waited for Lori to return from a late lunch...and it was worth the wait. The three of us chatted and shared memories, both good and not so good, for I don't know how long. All told, Keith and I spent over three tremendously nostalgic hours in the municipal building, staying so long that we decided to have lunch another day.
And I paid the traffic ticket for overtime parking that was waiting for me on the windshield of my truck.
With Capt. Shari Robertson
