Iowa Falls High School Class of 1969
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Iowa Falls High School Class of 1969
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Several of us were having a discussion about jail time and Thurston shared the following story with us. It really is too good to keep to ourselves so here it is for the word to see (with Thurston's permission)...
Lamberson Laments By Thurston Lamberson
Ok... It is time for me to confess. In 1970, I spent 5 (FIVE!!) days in the Grundy Center Jail for wrecking my brand new car without a license!! I had lost it for 3 speeding tickets in a year. Then Brad Dorenkamp and I packed up and we headed to Chicago for the weekend anyway. It was drizzling, and that turned to ice, and I lost it and rolled my brand new Opal Cadet Rally Sport down the ditch! To top it off, they stuck my ass in Jail for 5 days!! Isn't that like double indemnity or something?? Now the good part; I was in the Grundy Center Jail with this guy that had been back and forth between the GC Jail and the State prison for the last 22 years. He had spent his captivity reading law books and filing motions with the court, as you've heard of in other cases. This guy was hilarious. He had researched old laws still on the books at that time and had came up with a list of demands, as he was nearing his release date, and was there to present them to the Judge. Included in his demands were a new suite of clothes, a saddle, a Horse and a rifle, all from laws formulated and adopted in the 1800's. Here's the real funny story! In about 1949, he and his Uncle were in a dry goods store there in the Grundy area (I guess) and witnessed the store owner putting an amount of cash in the safe within the store. That set things in motion. In the wee hours of the night, these two came into town with an old pickup truck, vintage mid-30's, used a wood post, and, with the pickup, pushed the back door in at the loading dock. From there, they used pry bars and pried the safe out the door, across the dock, and into the back of the pickup. When the safe fell over into the pickup, it broke the rear axle! So, off they went, back to the farm, and got the tractor. With the tractor, they towed the pickup out of town, covering the back with tarpaulin, and to a waiting bridge along a gravel road. With torches, they cut the safe in half and removed the money. Then, they pried the safe out of the back of the truck and over the side of the bridge with the full intent of forever ridding this society of any evidence! Unfortunately, the water was less than a foot deep and both halves of the safe protruded from the water sufficiently to be found easily. With little they could do about that, they then towed the pickup back to the farm with the tractor to then discover that the tailgate of the truck was missing! This, perhaps, would not have been a total disaster has the license plate not been securely attached to it! So off they went back to town to find the tailgate. Again, unfortunately, the sheriff had found the safe missing and the tailgate at the base of the dock and was awaiting their return! They were then arrested and, after several other incidents came to light, sentenced to 20 some years in prison! Now I do not know how much, if any, of this story is true. What I have relayed to you above is the very short version and I found it difficult to impart it to you exactly as it was told to me. However, I think that the point here is that 5 days in the Grundy Center Jail could not have been made to go any better than for the company of this rather talkative, hilarious inmate. Someday, if you all treat me real nice, I'll tell you the pots and pans story; another theft from his younger years.
©COPYRIGHT 2007 Thurston Lamberson |
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