Two AM Wakeup Call

The phone call came at 2:00 am on Tuesday morning. "Can you bail us out," pleaded my roommate Dave.

Me: "Umm … why?"

Dave: "Bernie and I got arrested."

Me: "For what?"

Dave: "Stealing a street sign."

There's a back story to this. Bernie had a little fetish. He collected road signs—illegally.

He took them down from their posts on freeways. He grabbed them from railroad crossings. He liberated them from overpasses. He was quite adept at unbolting them without being seen. He filled our college apartment with them.

I determined early in our friendship that it never occurred to Bernie that signs have a purpose—to alert, inform, caution, and protect motorists. If a sign disappears, there is no warning about what's coming up ahead. To Bernie, they were simply low-hanging fruit, ripe for the taking.

I warned him that one day, his luck would run out. Sure enough, Bernie (with Dave as his accomplice) got caught with his hand on the prize. He picked the wrong place at the wrong time for the wrong sign.

You see, Bernie often told us that he absolutely had to add a "Bernard" street sign to his collection. Bernard Street is the main thoroughfare climbing through the South Hill bluff in Spokane.

One night during the school year, Bernie's taste for signs got the better of his common sense. Off they went on a nefarious midnight adventure.

They borrowed a ladder from a nearby home and leaned it against the signpost at West 19th and South Bernard. As Dave held the ladder, Bernie unbolted his dream sign.

And where did Bernie and Dave decided to conduct their dastardly business?

Right under the noses of the Spokane police.

Sadly, they picked THE ONE corner in all of Spokane that guaranteed they would be caught. Nineteenth ran through Manito Park, right on the edge of the bluff looking into downtown Spokane.

City folks went to the park to view the Spokane waterfalls, watch the annual fireworks, and have lovely picnics. Also... critical to this story... it was heavily used at night by teenagers exploring their first budding of romantic impulses.

For that reason, 19th was heavily patrolled by the Spokane police—probably more heavily than any other street in the city.

Of course, the Spokane police did stop.

And my roommates panicked. Right next to the signpost was the Nishinomiya Tsutakawa Japanese Garden, which its caretakers locked from the outside at night. Bernie and Dave jumped over the fence into the Japanese garden, effectively trapping themselves.

And that's why, at 2:00 am on a school night, I was called to bail them out of the Spokane jail. I assured Dave I would make the arrangements to release them.

Then I rolled over and went back to sleep. It wouldn't hurt them to spend the night contemplating their transgression.

Bernie was charged with trespassing in the Japanese garden. The fine was $750. He had to borrow the money and couldn't pay that month's share of the rent. Nothing was said in court about his having a street sign in his hands at the time of arrest. Dave, the accomplice, was given a $200 fine.

Later on, I asked, "why didn't you just go five miles farther south and take one of the county's white Bernard Street signs? They're as good as the city's green ones and the sheriff only patrols once or twice a night."