Raise a toast to absent companions.
Today I’m toasting Waylon Clifton and David Flagg.
Waylon was GNV police chief from 1985-96. And of all the top cops I’ve known, Waylon best understood what it meant to run a police department in a college town (speak softly and carry a big grin).
Plus he did a mean Elvis.
Waylon died in 2020.
David Flagg was GNV mayor from in 1987-88 before getting himself elected to the Florida Legislature.
He had…how shall I say this?…a unique sense of humor.
David died this summer.
So I suppose a long suppressed story about the night Waylon and Flagg became co-conspirators in a nefarious practical joke against a courageous newspaper editor can finally be told.
A NIGHT OF INFAMY
Friends and neighbors. I know you have come to think of me as a Pillar Of The Community. Law abiding. Integrity up the yang yang. Role model extraordinaire for all things good and honest.
But, alas, I was not always thus. And, listen, I wasn’t just ripping the tags off mattresses!
The statute of limitations having long run out, I can finally confess to being the Bret Maverick of GNV.
That is, to the extent that Bret would ever deign to play poker with nickel-dime-quarter pots. And sometimes rake in princely sums of $6, $8, and once even $9.35.
This at a time when penny ante poker was still (gasp!) illegal in Florida.
Back when I was editorial page editor of The Sun I occasionally (once in a blue moon, or every two weeks) hosted a dealer’s choice poker bacchanalia for a group of like-minded miscreants.
High-Low Chicago. Old Wooden Cross. Acey Deucey. We were besotted on obscure games of chance and cheap red wine.
THE TIMELY TIP OFF THAT SAVED WESTERN CIVILIZATION
Until the rainy night I got The Phone Call.
It happened in my Palmview Estates home with my usual bunch of renegades
Santa Fe Community College employees, political hacks, ink stained wretches, Otis the town drunk, the dog who ate my dad’s dentures.
The quarters were coming down like manna from Niagara Falls, friends a neighbors.
Until the phone shattered the silence like the veritable Chimes Of Hell!
“The police are on their way!” Said a woman with a voice as sultry as Mike Hammer’s gun moll.
And just like that the game was over. The cards vanished. Coins were swept off the table and into pockets (I still think Mike Sanford swept some of my coins into his pocket but Mike is also no longer with us to confirm or deny so I’m going to finally let that go. Oh, and a toast to Mike as well.)
AWASH IN GLISTENING RED AND BLUE
Suddenly there were red and blue flashing lights on my front lawn. The lights glistened like precious gems in the falling rain.
I stepped outside my front door and froze like the proverbial deer in the headlights.
Waylon Clifton stood next to his patrol car. On my lawn.
I imagined my all too brief journalistic career pouring down the gutter along with the rain.
A flashbulb exploded from the direction of my carport.
Where Mayor Flagg was taking incriminating photos.
Waylon laughed.
David laughed.
Otis the town drunk and my denture chewing dog howled.
I, inexplicably, had misplaced my world renown sense of humor.
Listen, Clifton liked a hearty joke as well as the next guy. But it turned out he was the one who arranged for the telephone tip-off.
Lest incriminating evidence inadvertently forced him to turn his mayor’s little practical joke into a TV 20 news flash.
Oh, and there’s a P.S. to this tawdry tale of wine-soaked cards, grimy nickels and David Flagg’s rotten sense of humor.
THE WHOLE DAMNED TOWN WAS ABUZZ
Not surprisingly, the infamous “Raid On Ron” was the talk of the town for a spell. One disgruntled county commissioner even expressed displeasure that no actual arrests had been made on that fateful rainy night.
I thought I was never gonna hear the end of it.
Which is why I cringed some time later when state Sen. George Kirkpatrick asked me if he could sit in on one of my poker games.
“Forget it Senator!,” I said. “I’m never playing poker again.”
Or words to that effect.
That was during the 1989 Florida legislative session. And as was my wont I wrote a typical end-of-session holier-than-thou Sun editorial chastising our local legislative delegation (George included) for not accomplishing very much of note that year.
GIFT WRAPPED AND TANTALIZING
On the day the damnable editorial ran I got a phone call from the downstairs reception desk.
“Somebody left a package for you,” the receptionist said.
So I took myself downstairs to find a nicely gift-wrapped box, replete with red ribbon bow.
“Hello!” said I with a tip of my Sherlock Holmes deerslayer hat.
This was it! In my feverish imagination someone had left me Pulitzer worthy stuff.
A suppressed grand jury report maybe.
A damning audit that would send the whole city commission to jail.
A pic of a local pol in a motel with an alpaca. Who knows?
My fingers fumbled as I hastily unwrapped my Big Newspaper Break.
And there is was looking up at me from the bottom of the box.
A single page.
From the daily Senate Journal.
Of the last day of the 1989 session.
On which I read that Sen. Kirkpatrick moved final passage of SB number so-and-so.
Said bill legalizing penny ante poker in Florida.
Which was George’s clever way of telling me that, yes, he had indeed done something worthwhile during that legislative session.
MY GIFT TO OLD GUYS IN CONDOS
Which is how I came to, in roundabout fashion, play at least a minor role in the undoing of a draconian big gommint restriction on the freedom of old guys in condos to play Spit In The Ocean, Liar’s Poker, Indian Baseball and other nefarious games of choice.
You’re welcome old guys.
Oddly, more than 30 years later, I seldom get together with old pals to play now legal small stakes card games for nickels, dimes and quarters.
And not because I’m still smarting from the David and Waylon’s infamous Raid On Ron.
Mostly it’s because my pals and I can no longer remember all of the convoluted rules to the truly ridiculous poker games we used to play while besotted on cheap read wine.
Speaking of which.
One more toast to absent companions.
FreeGNV 