Getting It While You Can by Will Mayo

But the only people who ever treated me as a man in my own right were the down and out and lonely who never had anything of their own. For instance, I can recall back in the late '80s when I came across a man smoking some crack out of a converted Coke can in a deserted little park there in the middle of the night on the East Side of Frederick. 

I watched him while he puffed and choked on the awful mess of it all and then beheld a cop in a patrol car driving to the side of the park with all his lights set to roaring. Calmly as you please, I walked up to the police car and said, "Can I help you, Officer?" "Park's closed after hours. You boys better get." We walked away as the cop drove off. This earned me another round of beers. That was just another night in the long ago. The town slumbered on.