Re: Medicare

[Dan Scanlan <coolhanduke@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Jun 12, 2005, at 8:19 PM, paul phillips wrote:

> My daughter, the nurse, sent me this. I thought people on pen-l might
> appreciate it.
> ....tells me shit."
I have a real life instance of this sort of thing!

In 1975 I was working all night at the old Public Market in
Sacramento, now the site, I believe, of the California Secretary of
State's office. I was part of the set-up crew for the "Yankee Doodle
Christmas Fair", an arts and crafts festival, giving special notice
to the upcoming national bi-centennial celebration. We were
scrambling to meet our Thanksgiving opening day. As the sun came up,
I was asked to help a stranded motorist who had stalled while off-
loading on the sidewalk in front of the building we were working in.
e I was tinkering with the car when a Sacramento cop came by and
ordered us to "get that goddam vehicle off the sidewalk." Wwe chained
up to a second car and dragged the stalled car around the corner.

We were immediately pulled over by a cop. I was steering the towed car.

Neither one of us had our IDs on us -- they were in our tool boxes
where we were working -- so the cop took us to jail.

The other guy got out immediately -- he had an unpaid parking ticket
and so they believed who he was and let his friends pay his ticket
and let him go. Me, I had a clean record so they kept me in jail,
apparently not believing that a bearded grunt who had been working in
the underground utility closets all night could have a clean record,
and I must not be who I said I was.

After a day of watching drunks and failures to appear come and go, I
asked a guard if I could make a phone call. It was 11:30 at night. I
called the jail and asked for myself. They said there was no one in
jail by that name. I said there was, too, that I was calling from the
jail and had been there since 6 am. They let me out. I'm sure there
are no records to show I was ever there.

Dan Scanlan