Late Night Ned

Driving around Ned late at night is a real trip. Apparently, the police have told all the merchants in town to leave all their lights on so the police can see in.

The whole town is lit up like a saturday night and there's nary a person in sight. I drove around for the better part of an hour and saw one other car, passing through town on the highway. No people, no cars, and no cops, either. I could have walked off with the whiole town.....

Of course, the Expo was silent as the Grave...

 

The Roundabout, scene of earlier revelery was erie and cold

After driving around the center of town and not finding anything going on, I drove down some of Nederlands town streets. It's amazing how many streets end up being someone's driveway. I got stuck in one place after a quarter mile drive through some woods that was so packed with equipment and machinery that I almost couldn;t get turned around. Just as I finally backed and filled the tenth time and pulled back into the driveway out, the lights came on....sorry.

It was after this, around 5 or so that I finally ran into someone....Chadwick the third and Doc Ron.

As I drove slowly down a street off the main drag, I came across two guys walking and shouting in the middle of the street. Being the friendly sort that I am, I stopped and chatted with them for a spell. One of them was more vocal than the other and was ranting about drunk chicks leaving him to fend for himself. His buddy was trying to reason with him and get him to calm down. both were obviously walking because they could *not* drive. We talked in the middle of the street for 15 minutes or so and I offered to give them a ride.....

That set off quite an argument about just where they should go....a friends, home to boulder, or back to the drunk chick and apologize. I finally decided to pull over and hash this out with them so we pulled into the shopping center parking lot and sat in the truck passing around libations and discussing just where they should go. The vocal one introduced himself as the scion of a local well known family that had fallen on hard times. That was Chadwick the Third (as I called him in *my* mind) He reminded me of Ruel the Wastrel in Maxwell anderson's The Wingless Victory. (A frozen NoPrize to you if you know this obscure reference...) He kept going on about how he hoped I wasn't going to kill them and then wondered if I was a cop. Then he'd start to bitch about the Drunk chick and how she enticed him along and then left him cold. Then back to wondering if I was going to pull out a gun,,,,then back to the drunk chick again. So, I told him I ran for sheriff and that I probably knew 5 different ways to kill him before he would even know he was dead. That gave him pause and after that he didn't know quite what to do. After a couple of additional queries, I found out that the Drunk chick he was referring to was the same drunk chick I had seen at the Blue Ball a couple hours ago and who had run off with a city official in pursuit. small world. when they found out who I was, they couldn;t believe it and we had to celebrate a bit more...I broke out the dry ice.

Everyone finally got mellow enough to decide that they would go and try to apologize to the drunk chick and see if they could stay at her house. I fired up the truck and pulled away from the police station (remember....no cops anywhere, especially at the station) and headed back into the heart of Ned, where I dropped off the two and bid them a fond farewell....

And so, we come to the end of the first 24. Dawn was approaching and I decided to head back to where I was staying and catch a couple hours Zs before I had to start out all over again.....

Back to the beginning.