Confessions of a Horseshoer

Crime in a Small Town

147 Crime in a Small Town I live in the rural Northwest, where, contrary to popular belief, a small town can have problems with crime. I’m going to tell about some of them. Before I get into the actual crimes we have to deal with here, I need to mention one curious thing. We don’t seem to have many problems with kids or teenagers.It’s an odd experience to walk up to a 17-year-old kid whose hair is sticking straight up in multi-colored spikes, his body covered with tattoos,his head filled with metal piercings,and ask him how to get to the nearest Starbucks, and he responds pleasantly and eagerly, even calling you “sir.”This usually happens. And the kid isn’t playing you for a fool; it’s the way the kids act around here. I never got that kind of response in California . Another thing that may have something to do with kids is that there never seems to be any graffiti anywhere, even on bathroom walls in gas stations. This is pretty much true throughout the area. The biggest graffiti I’ve seen is on the walls of a tunnel where the culprits use a wet towel to write their messages in the grime on the tunnel walls. The messages will say something like, “I love you Sarah,” “Support the Queen of the Netherlands,” or “US out of Oregon.”The 148 • Confessions of a Horseshoer • messages last only a few days, however, because the cleanup crews wash down the walls frequently. But each week the police report in the local paper lists some car break-ins where stereos and such are stolen. Granted, most of these are because the car wasn’t locked, but some are actually “break-ins.”Occasionally we even have something stolen from a house, usually because the doors were not locked, or a window was left open, but serious, nevertheless. A few months ago, I was an unwitting participant in one of the more violent criminal acts. I had just finished shoeing some horses and had stopped at our local Mom and Pop restaurant for a hamburger and milkshake.My wife was with me and we began to wonder why the milkshake was taking so long. We finally asked the waitress, who told us that they had run out of milk and had to send the cook to the store to get some, and she was still at the store because her exhusband had shown up at the same time and had pulled his rifle out of his truck and was threatening to shoot her when she came out of the store with our milk.The police were trying to talk the ex-husband out of it, but the guy was a stubborn sort and it might be some time before we got the milk to make our milk shake. We had finished our hamburgers by this time and decided to forget the milkshake and go look at the standoff, but it was all settled by the time we got there. I guess everyone said they were sorry and it wouldn’t happen again, and they all parted on good terms. Pretty exciting while it lasted, however. As if that wasn’t crime enough,a few months later we were actually on the site of an attempted shoplifting. Apparently • Crime in a Small Town • 149 a young woman had tried to steal something from the Longs drugstore and was spotted in the act by a plainclothes policeman who caught her outside and was trying to put her on the ground to handcuff her. She was shouting for help, and yelling that she was being attacked.Of course this caused several bystanders led by an old gentleman to rush to her assistance demanding to know what the man was doing and ready to attack him in her defense. The beleaguered cop struggled to get his badge out with one hand and control the woman with the other. He kept yelling, “Stand back, sir!” which had no effect at all. I guess he was probably some big city cop unacquainted with the independent and determined ways of the locals. After a few tense moments and careful scrutiny of his badge, the ominous crowd stepped back. We didn’t get to see the conclusion of this event because our truck was right in the middle of the...