With a hat tip to Dre, N.W.A. et al., for the term, the best Christmas present anyone ever gave me was a wrinkled, three-by-seven-inch piece of pink paper that came “Straight Outta Compton” back in 1984. It wasn’t wrapped and didn’t have a bow or a card. It came early, five days before Christmas. It was a complete surprise. I was twenty-seven years old, living at the beach, and had everything a guy my age wanted. The present came after what started as just another Thursday night. We had met at Beachbum Burt’s at King’s Harbor in Redondo Beach. I was all suited up; I’d had a job interview that afternoon. I got the job, but I would have been drinking either way. Six hours and God knows how many beers later, I was driving to another party — not a stellar decision. Thirty minutes after that, I was handcuffed, sitting in the back of a Lawndale PD squad car headed for a night in the Compton Jail. That was the first ticket I ever got and the last drink I ever had. And it was the best present of my life, courtesy of the Compton PD.
Shit happens. Compton, California — 1984
I found out later that my BAC was over .2. Jesus. No one knew for sure because they breathalyzed me at two different Sherrif stations — hinky equipment, they said at the time. I really think they just wanted me to give me a tour of the Compton jail. Whatever it was, I was still fermenting when I got to the facility, and that’s why my recollection of that night is so sketchy. I remember little except for them taking my jacket, tie, shoes, belt, keys, and wallet and putting them all in a plastic bag. I got to keep my pants, shirt, and socks. They put me in a holding cell that was the size of a three-car garage and painted drab gray. Four metal benches were bolted to the walls, and a stainless steel toilet sat in the corner. Two guys were in there when I went through the formidable metal gate. It slammed shut behind me, loud, but I was too drunk to be scared. I curled up in the middle of the floor and passed out.
When I came to a few hours later, at least fifteen guys had joined me in that cell. I still wasn’t aware of how bad things were; I was managing that “morning-after-the-night-before” feeling. As I processed the regret and self-recrimination and promised myself that I’d never do this again (for the hundredth time), I realized I had no control over what happened next. Suddenly, I was terrified.
As the morning crept by, I got anxious and jumpy. I tried to relax and breathe, but I was a mess. As close as Compton and Redondo Beach are geographically, they are as far apart as you can get in every other way. It’s not right, but that’s what it is. And as comfortable as I could be lying on the beach outside my apartment, I was a thousand times more uncomfortable lying on the concrete floor in that cell. Even worse, I had no idea how long I’d be there.
Sometime around ten that morning, a guard shuffled up to the gate and called my name. I pulled myself off the floor, wobbled a bit, and headed toward him. The other guys eyed me as I walked across the concrete floor. I wanted to run. But really, I’d been lucky; my time in that cell was uneventful. No one hassled me. As the guard opened the gate, I walked through it and tried not to cry.
A Parking Ticket Away from a Frightening New Life
He led me down a long, empty hall into an annex and to an old, improvised metal desk that seemed out of place, standing alone on the tile floor. A massive officer with a shaved head and a brown uniform sat at an old wooden swivel chair, looking down at a stack of papers. He had gym-forged arms and shoulders, his enormous neck pushed at the seams in his collar. I wondered how he was breathing.
“So, how was your stay with us, Mr. Michaelson?” the big officer asked with a tight, fake smile. “Was everything satisfactory?”
I didn’t know what to say to that huge man, and I’m sure that was the point. He pulled my plastic bag of things from a drawer beside him, gripped it tight in his oversized fist, and held it out for me to take. He pulled it back as I reached for it, and his look turned hard.
“In case you forgot,” he said slowly, “the Christmas holiday has started, and the courts are closed.”
He gave me the cop look that he used on hardened criminals. It was terrifying.
“If there would have been an unpaid citation on your record, a ticket for speeding, parking, or even jaywalking,” he nodded toward the bag as he held it out, “you would have spent the weekend in County lockup.”
My present was taped to the bag: a small, pink piece of paper — a copy of my ticket. It looked a lot like I did at that moment. Crinkled, with a small tear in the corner, the blue carbon transfer ink had already started to fade. It was already hard to read what the offense was. But I knew. My first ticket, my only ticket, was a DUI. Merry fucking Christmas.
“You dodged a bullet this time; most people don’t get a second chance, and they never get a third.” The super-sized officer looked one last time into my bloodshot eyes, “I recommend you never come back here again, champ.” He winked at me, but it wasn’t an inside joke kind of wink, “Your next visit won’t be nearly as pleasant.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I could smell the alcohol on my breath. I followed that with a weak “Thank you.” I sounded pathetic. I shuffled down the hallway, clutching the bag with my pink ticket. I pushed my way through the double doors of the station and down the steps. When I got to the sidewalk, I threw up.
I walked to a payphone across the street and called a cab. I needed a ride to my car, wherever it was. Then I called work and asked the receptionist to let my boss know I’d had a “little issue” and would be in shortly. She put me on hold to let him know, and when she returned, she asked if I could stop by the liquor store and grab a couple of cases of Michelob for the office Christmas party. My stomach heaved again.
Things Change: My First Ticket and My Last Drink
That was my second Christmas in Los Angeles and my first at the beach. I started working at an oil company in 1980, spent time on the road, and got called to corporate in ’82. When I moved into the “condo in Redondo” in ’84, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I was twenty-seven years old, single, and had a good job. The South Bay was paradise for a guy who’d grown up in Minnesota and went to college in a desert. It was like nowhere I’d been before. The ocean, the piers, the nightlife, the beach cities up the coast, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Hollywood, and the Valley. The people had a vibe that worked for me.
But that Christmas I spent alone. My roommate was away with her boyfriend, and my family was back in the Midwest. We had no pets to play with. So all I thought about was how much my life would have changed had I been sent to lockup. Take one look at me and you know that I’m a Midwesterner through and through. On a good day, I’m five-ten and 165. I am not a fighter; I’d had a few scraps, mainly on the ice, but I don’t get mad enough to fight. I would have been chum bait.
Even three days in LA County would have been life-changing for me back then. I’ve had a couple of friends spend extended time in jail and a good friend who went to prison. They never talked about it after they got out, and no one ever asked. There seems to be a universal understanding that what happens to a guy when he’s locked up is beyond words or imagination and nobody’s business. But they never seem the same after the experience. I came an unpaid parking ticket away from being one of those guys. My relationship with Southern California would have changed dramatically had I not been released that Thursday morning.
It took me about a day to realize that this ticket was a gift, not a curse. While it would change my life, it wouldn’t ruin it. It would change my typical “drink til you drop” nights to something different, less dangerous. In my head, I replayed a “Greatest Hits” video of all the stellar nights I’d had since heading off to college a decade earlier and found the few I could remember painfully embarrassing. This ticket offered me a chance to change things up. Go back to the way things were before every day started with three cigarettes and ended when we drank the last beer.
That was forty years ago, and the legal, financial, personal, and professional hits I took from that ticket are well behind me. That ticket has, for all practical purposes, disappeared. But only from the records. The feeling of helplessness that was with me inside that holding cell, on my drive home, and during that weekend has never left. And that’s a good thing. Knowing I was a hair’s breadth away from spending the weekend in LA County and all the bad that would have come from that shitshow haunts me as much as it motivates me.
I quit drinking that day. Not because alcohol was bad, but because I didn’t know how to drink and I had wasted my chance to learn. Another ticket like that and I would have gone to jail and lost my license. In my hands, alcohol was toxic, at least. If I had doubts about that before my night in Compton, they disappeared when I woke up on that unforgiving cement floor.
Merry Christmas — Happy New Habits
There was one shopping day left before Christmas after my night in Compton, so I decided to go shopping. I drove into Santa Monica for a coffee at one of my hangover haunts. As I pulled into the lot, I saw a bike shop across the street. Helen’s Cycles was legendary among serious cyclists, although at that point, I wouldn’t have known the difference between a crank arm and a seat post. But it didn’t matter. I needed a new habit, something that would make me feel better the next day. I walked into the shop and wheeled out a bright yellow Trek 1200 twenty minutes later. It cost me seven hundred dollars and was the second-best Christmas gift ever.
That bike and I became fast friends. I discovered a Southern California that I would have never seen from a car. I put thousands of miles on that bike, riding up and down the coast through the beach cities and boardwalks. Ascents and descents over the mountains, deep into the Valleys. I made mix tapes that I played on my Sony Walkman. It was that long ago.
Challenges Are Just Opportunities in Disguise
Everyone faces challenges that give us choices, and those are usually followed by decisions. No matter how minor or great, we make choices every minute of every day. Most aren’t as big as this. I quit drinking that day. I didn’t quit as much as I replaced it with different habits, most of them physical and much healthier. And I made a change that pointed me in a new direction. A year or so later, I’d make another one that proved just as significant for different reasons. Twenty years later, I’d produce an impaired driving campaign for the state of Arizona that I’d like to think saved a few lives. DUI Expect the Max changed the laws in Arizona, and more than a few people spent weekends in Sherrif Joe’s Tent City. I visited it, and I can say it’s still better than Compton.
That night and that ticket completely altered my arc. It scared me shitless and straight. Since then, I’ve been everyone’s designated driver, and I couldn’t be happier about that. I love being around people who know how and what to drink and who do it responsibly but with gusto. I envy them that. But I haven’t missed it one bit. I’ve done other things with my nights. The folks in Compton, CA, gave me the best gift I ever, and I never got to thank them. They changed my life, made it a lot richer — and a helluva lot longer.
