Learning the Law at 17
At the prime for adventure age of seventeen, I was locked up for four hours, which seemed like an eternity. The cell in Woodstock NY was clean and empty with the exception of myself and a new friend whose name I shall not repeat in case she has maintained this incident as private. We were arrested for swimming topless in a stream running through Woodstock, NY, on a hot August afternoon a year after the real Woodstock festival had taken place.
I think we figured since there was previously thousands of naked people dancing in the farm upstream before we came here, that it would not be a problem. We never considered it to be illegal, until we saw the cop car and the two officers peering down the hill over us. It was then we realized the voyeurs were hostile forces coming to take us away as we hurried to place on our clothes and run. They got to us before we could scamper away as teens will do when confronted with consequence.
Turn in and finger print is hardly the same as turned on and tune out. We were in jail y'all, and I could only wonder what my mother would do to me when I went home if and when I got out of there. I never wondered what my rights were or what would happen to me? I never learned my constitutional rights or if these were even read to me when the cops placed me in the back of the car ?
How grounded would I be? It didn't seem to matter really because my mother wasn't home most of my waking hours. She worked six days a week to pay the bills. But we had a house, and food. I always had clothes and shoes that were new at the start of the school year. I never even questioned we had money or not because I had what I needed and we had bagels and pastries and fish every Thursday night.
After a few hours, Marc, paid the fine and got us out of the jail house. I had been dating Marc and he was the one who had convinced me to come to Woodstock. He told me we would have a memorable time spending the weekend in Woodstock. He was sure it would make up for missing the big concert last summer, the summer of Woodstock, the ultimate 60's summer. If memorable means going to jail and paying a hundred dollars for each tit that was exposed to the sun, and to police that day in August, he was right. I think that the police should have paid us instead of us paying them.
What I learned from the arrest was that places that have low crime rates, have cops desperate to find something to do to validate their performance and to create money to pay themselves. I don't know where my friend got two hundred dollars to spring his criminal girlfriend from the tank, but I was filled with affection and gratitude none the less for the help. I got to sit in a cell for a few hours and realize that a life of crime was probably not my best option, so I had best find a better life law abiding path. My mother never found out about my arrest and aside from never telling her, I never went topless again in New York state. There were other places I found that would prove more open to topless bathing down the line.
