A year or three ago, when the MAX Blue Line in Portland was newish and the local Police Bureau had recently swapped in their helmets for these cool, new baseball-style hats, my friend and I were walking from the downtown Nordstrom back to the parking garage.
Our stroll was quiet at first: late summer and late in the day, the air was still warm but the light was fading. The need for law enforcement evidently was not.
Proceeding down Yamhill Street along the rail line, we saw something strange in the twilight ahead of us: headlights, askance and uneven, as if a car was partially up on the sidewalk. Sure enough, it was an unattended police car off to the side of the MAX tracks, lights on and motor running.
“Well, didn’t you see it?” asked the couple who had been walking in front of us. “There was a tussle between this cop and this vagrant ending up in a foot chase. They went that-a-way,” they explained, pointing downhill toward the Willamette River.
I didn’t notice that this tussle had resulted in the cop’s hat ending up in the middle of the street — until “clippety-clop,” upon the cobblestone in front of us appeared a Portland Police officer, mounted atop his steed, in full regalia, coming to the rescue.
Without slowing down, and in a booming voice as he passed us, the officer pointed to the hat and looked at me: “Sir! Will you pick up that hat, walk it over to the car, throw it through the open window — and reach in and turn the car off?”
Without giving it a second thought, I quickly responded, “Yes!” and set out into the street — still clutching my shopping bag from Nordstrom.
But now for my moral dilemma. I picked up the hat and walked around to the driver’s side where no one would see me. I held in one hand a one-of-a-kind souvenir, and in the other hand the perfect means to appropriate it. What in the heck is a guy supposed to do?
I got to the open car window and reached through it with hat in hand. And then … I deposited it on the front seat, turned off the lights and motor, and withdrew. But not without one more look, one last fleeting pang of desire for something I couldn’t have. I walked away.
The next day, I picked up a newspaper and, after considerable searching, found a small bit about an uncooperative detainee who, after breaking away from a police officer, ran up to the middle of the Morrison Bridge and jumped into the river below. I don’t know if he was ever recovered.
I do know that, about 20 years ago, I made the right decision. I had, after all, given my word.
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