Travis, his eighteen 'month' old daughter and I had just been out to the edge of town to pick up one ounce of pot for a few lazy summer afternoons of fun when he spotted the police car in the rear vision mirror of his 1977 Ford Escort. Given that I was still entertaining thoughts of practicing law at the time, I believe my initial reaction was to have an embolism and say the word 'fuck' about three 'hundred' thousand times, especially once the police fired up their siren and, lights flashing, motioned us to pull over.

To his credit, having been in these kinds of situations before, Travis, the ever'unshaven local council worker with a specialty in tricking cars to make their exhausts louder, was as cool as could be. Pulling over, he carefully stuffed the marijuana into the plastic housing cased around the gearstick. He then calmly asked if I might refrain from saying the word 'fuck' in front of his daughter and, motioning towards the gearstick, promptly assured me, 'These cunts'll never find it in there... Well, unless they have a dog.' With a flash of panic in his eyes, Travis leered into the rear vision mirror. 'Do they have a fucking dog?'

Increasingly worried, and now certain we'd probably been under surveillance throughout the entire course of the drug pick'up, I turned around to see if there were any German Shepherds being led over to maul my groin into oblivion in the search for illicit substances. Instead, I was immediately met by a police officer crouching at my door asking if I might open the window.

'Righto guys, nothing to be concerned about' the officer explained. 'If you'll just follow us to the station.'

With that, the officer returned to his police car, veered out into the road and waited for us to follow. Travis and I looked at each other uneasily. Now we were being led into the proverbial lion's den 'the local police station' with an ounce of pot hidden in the gearstick. His eighteen'month old daughter also conveniently picked this exact moment to cheerily cry out 'fuck!'

Excellent.

Thankfully, after a tense five'minute drive to the police station, all was revealed in the rear parking lot. A mobile Roads and Traffic Authority vehicle inspection station had been set up in conjunction with the police, who were now pulling over 'hotted'up' looking cars and taking them in for assessment of roadworthiness. Even with the impressive female Viking, sword in hand, spray'painted topless along the side of the car, Travis' rather decrepit and worn out Ford Escort, most certainly merited inspection to the eyes of the local constabulary.

The carpark was a veritable rainbow of shit'chariots big and small from across town that had largely been pieced together by weekend'hot'rod enthusiasts into environmental and safety disasters. Everyone of course knew each other as well, and above the din of thundering, leaking engines you could faintly hear cries of 'Hey Baz, they got you too?', 'Yo, Lozza, how'd they pull you in for that piece of shit?' and the occasionally irrelevant 'Hey Gaz, I fucked your mum!' If the excited drivers had decided to crank up some AC/DC on the car stereo and start smoking the pot in Travis' car 'and if this wasn't actually a police operation' things would have looked no different from any other Saturday in the small town.

Unable to dump the drugs given the large police presence, when time came for the Ford Escort to be examined, things really started to get problematic. As ordered, Travis drove his vehicle up onto the inspection station, and we all emptied out of the car and anxiously watched as the R.T.A inspectors began poring over the vehicle with flashlights, screwdrivers and a checklist. With another police officer hovering nearby and watching the proceedings, we figured it was only a matter of time before the fastidious inspectors gave the officer a wink, called him over, and the game was up' one ounce of pot discovered stashed in a gearstick. Resigned to our fate, Travis and I shared a cigarette and began rehearsing our respective explanations for his wife and my parents as to how we'd landed in such a mess.

Again, but only to a point, the Gods were indeed smiling upon us that afternoon, for even after a lengthy twenty'minute inspection the R.T.A workers didn't uncover the secret shrubbery. Still, as noted, the Gods were only smiling up to a point, for at the end of the inspection, Travis was informed that his car had been deemed unfit and unsafe for driving on NSW roads. He was handed a sheet that contained some twenty'three infractions on the vehicle, everything from faulty spark'plugs and unsatisfactory wiring, through to unsafe seat'belts and an incorrectly installed speedometer. But perhaps the most damaging news for Travis was regarding his engine. An old hunk of junk he had largely recovered from scrap several years before and soldered into the Escort, the R.T.A inspector now declared, 'About your engine... It's not clearing any of the tests. It's deficient across the board, not only barely running, but a legitimate fire hazard. It could well explode at any moment if you allowed things to overheat at high speed or under intense strain.'

A shiver rushed through me as I silently counted the number of times Travis had taken us rally driving on the edge of town at dusk over the previous six weeks after we'd knocked out a good three to four bongs each. Somewhere along the way he'd discovered that the rapid bumps and shifts of his car racing along unlit dirt roads was one of the best ways to send his daughter to sleep before putting her down to bed back at home. Indeed, one of the more surreal experiences of my life had been tripping out in the back seat of the Escort in the dim light, looking down to see a baby fast asleep in her car safety'seat. All the while Travis and Graham respectively drove and navigated us through hairpins and across flat plains at over 150 kilometres an hour, occasionally only mustering up the strength to say something like 'Dude, big corner up ahead', and 'Fuck yeah, that was nice, mate.' So perhaps that acrid smell of melting steel I'd always picked up toward the end of our rally tours of the central west at nine in the evening was in fact the engine preparing itself to blow us all to pieces. Perhaps this police intervention hadn't been such a bad idea after all...

'So...' mulled Travis, as he puffed thoughtfully at his cigarette. 'What you're saying is''
'Mate the engine is fucked' replied the inspector. 'And not just fucked up, real fucked up. I'd just as soon have this entire car dumped immediately. But what we're gonna' do is this. We'll give you a week 'that's all' within which time you can either get the car roadworthy, or declare it for the trash heap.' He pointed at the repair sheet. 'Do what you've gotta' do.'

Scratching his head deep in thought, Travis nodded, and strapped his daughter back into the car. As I climbed back in I nervously glanced at the gearstick. While they'd managed to find twenty'three things wrong with the vehicle, they inexplicably hadn't managed to find our marijuana.

With all of us wincing nervously, Travis started up his dangerous engine and we headed for home. Travis earned approximately $14 an hour working four part'time shifts a week for the local council on a road gang. His wife worked night shifts at a factory packing frozen vegetables and earning about the same. They had a daughter to raise, they had bills to pay and pot to buy. He needed his car for work or he'd be fired. And yet the R.T.A's checklist demanded at least $8,500 worth of repairs to be made within a week. Travis didn't have that kind of money. Later that night, as he enthusiastically tucked into the ounce of pot, he came up with a plan.

And a heinously stoned plan at that.

Next Issue: High Times in Country NSW Part II' Of Savage Dogs at the Auto Wreckers