“A good friend calls you in jail. A great friend bails you out of jail. Your best friend sits next to you and says, 'wasn't that fun?’”
― Groucho Marx
I was driving down a dark road to nowhere in particular when I saw the headlights of a car following me. I owned this red Porsche 356C at the time, which was little more than a Volkswagen Beetle pretending to be a sports car. It was a pretense I wholeheartedly embraced and I had something to prove. So, I sped up a little in hopes of outdistancing the car behind. This I did perhaps three times with the same result each time—the headlights reappeared—except the last time, when the car's siren began to blare and its flashing red lights lit up my rearview mirror. This wasn't my first speeding ticket, but it was the one that rendered by driver's license moot. Any further driving infractions would result in jail time.
I had spent a few weeks a year or so before rebuilding my little car's engine using oversized cylinders and pistons I had purchased from JC Whitney, a company that specialized in all manner of car parts for DIYers like myself. My hope was to make my little red "sports car" a little bit sportier. Removing the engine was a simple affair since the rear-mounted engine was affixed to the transmission by only four bolts. By removing these bolts and jacking up the rear end of my car, I could easily remove its engine.
A brief feeling of déjà vu washed over me as I removed the last bolt, but I persisted. I recalled visions of the geyser of oil that had resulted from my last effort at “improving” my car's performance during my college years. I hoped the Grand Goddess would treat me better this time around. Perhaps if I had failed I would have avoided future jail time, but things went pretty smoothly. Turns out the Grand Goddess had bigger plans for me. Curiously, I was left with a small pile of nuts and bolts when finished. I never did figure out why these parts were used in the first place, as my car seemed to work perfectly fine without them.
I was pulled over a few weeks after that third speeding ticket for an incidental offense—a burned-out taillight—and I was "invited" to the Dane County, WI courthouse to plead my case before a judge. It wasn't my only appearance before a Dane County judge. That other appearance was to finalize my divorce in 1975, a formality really, but one with a twist as it turns out.
"No-fault" divorce was not available in Wisconsin until 1977, so I had to act out a bit of kabuki theatre in front of a judge. The particulars of my divorce had been worked out beforehand. All I had to do was say a few scripted lines and my divorce would be finalized. If there were no objections from my spouse, I could claim "withholding of affection" as a legitimate reason for divorce recognized by the state of Wisconsin. Pretty simple. Not so easy.
This I was prepared to do, but first I had to suffer a bit of indignity at the hands of the Grand Goddess. Before I addressed the judge to claim that my wife would no longer touch me, the Grand Goddess, disguised as a high school teacher, trouped a high school civics class into the courtroom to learn firsthand about the ins and outs of modern divorce procedures. Now, I had an audience to witness my soliloquy. Just what I needed to complete my humiliation. They were enthralled by my speech. You could have heard a pin drop.
This was almost as embarrassing as my serving as a teaching prop to a gaggle of medical students learning about "hydroceles" (Google it.) when I was in college. I visited the UNC infirmary to find out why my balls were so big. Originally, I thought this was a sign of virility, but as my condition progressed to the point of absurdity, I thought better of the situation. A simple medical exam was required.
This was my introduction to transillumination, a diagnostic technique that was later applied unsuccessfully to breast cancer detection. The idea is pretty simple: Shine a bright light into the organ of interest and see what comes out the other side. My scrotum lit up like a gaudy Christmas ornament. The medical students were duly impressed—as was I.
Later, much later, I would apply an analogous technique using infrared radiation coupled to an ultrasound detector in an attempt to "see" inside the breast, so-called "photoacoustic imaging". Perhaps my earlier introduction to transillumination had paved the way. It would have been nice, however, if that introduction had been a little less traumatic.
I explained to the traffic-court judge that the only way I could get to my job was to drive. He had heard this story a hundred times before. He was totally understanding and totally unmoved. He decreed, "Ten days in the Dane County jail." Down came his gavel. With two days off for good behavior, I would pay off my debt to society over two successive weekends. Each weekend counted as four days. I would sign in to jail on Friday at 6:00 pm and be released Monday at 6:00 am—no television, no radio, and no sharp objects, only boredom to be shared with three other reprobates in a communal jail cell. We weren't even given some license plates to bang out. I think the Grand Goddess was in a nearby cell laughing Her ass off.
I bought a bicycle soon after my release.
Oh, by the way, my hydrocele was easily remedied. Snip, snip.