Crack On Credit: October 14-16, 2006

The following day, Saturday, I looked out my front window to see Sherrod standing on the sidewalk. He was not on my property at that time, so I just watched for a while. He had something in his hands and was shuffling them like a deck of cards. I could tell they weren’t cards, but didn’t know exactly what they were. Then, a man came up to buy crack from him. In lieu of payment, this man handed Sherrod his driver’s license as collateral. I would estimate that Sherrod had five or six different licenses in his hands at that time.


By this point I was more amused than angry or concerned. Heck, I’m a student of economics, and here I was getting a real life lesson in the black-market economy. If I pay close enough attention to what is going on here, I might become as famous as the guy who studied the use of cigarettes for money in the POW camps. But then Sherrod had to go and ruin all the fun. I still have no idea why in the hell he did this, but he reached over and placed a single license on the edge of my front porch, then walked away.


I immediately went out to retrieve the card. My gut instinct was telling me to cut it up, then put the pieces on the sidewalk. I also considered just keeping it inside the house and waiting to see if Sherrod, or anyone else, would come to ask about it. But I realized that idea might backfire and if I was caught by the police with someone else’s license it would probably get me in trouble. So I called the police.


It seemed so trivial, calling the police because a man had placed someone’s license on my porch, but if I don’t report this stuff then FWPD could simply continue to deny that it was even happening. As I was explaining things to the officers, Sherrod turned the corner a block away and started walking back this way. I pointed him out and the officer walked over and met him a half block from my house. Sherrod just laughed as the officers were talking to him and pointing at me. After a few minutes they let him go. I couldn’t see, but I wonder if they just went ahead and gave the license back to him, even though it was not his own.


Well, quietly talking with the police wasn’t working. Posting seven no trespassing signs wasn’t working. And lighting up the corner like the blazing sun wasn’t working. I finally decided it was time to stop being subtle. The following Monday (October 16) I made a 2’ x 4’ sign and posted it on the side of my house. Included on the sign was a copy of the letter I had sent to Chief York. By the time I took this picture of the sign, it had sustained some water damage, but I thought it looked pretty good when I first put it up.

Okay, Except for that one spelling error, it looked good!