Boo and the manhole cover rumor

I can't remember the "when", it must have been way back in 2002.  

The "who" was a neighbor, Mike and I, "what" we were talking about the recent arrest of a acquaintance, a guy about 5 years older than us, Boo C.

"Why" am I telling this tale?  

We may just be the original source of the rumor becoming true....(inspired by a report from AP this morning)

FLINT, Mich. - Officials in Flint, Mich., say they've had to replace hundreds of manhole covers and grates that were probably stolen and sold for scrap.

We have to go back to the day after Boo's arrest, which involved his pickup, a bathtub, a chain and a trail of sparks...

Boo was just one of the older guys hanging out in the early seventies, that was really the last I ever saw him or heard of him as folks grow older and move on.

When Mike told me about the circumstances of Boo's arrest on a US highway about 5 miles away, I pictured him in my memories of a 6'6" stringbean type, the last escapade back in the summer of 1972 when about 20 of the boys helped him seine his uncle's pond (who was in Florida vacationing) in order to have a fish fry.

So Boo and a few others from way back when got hooked in the meth epidemic, which is double trouble because of the accompanying crimes that arise.  These guys never sleep, so they are always one step ahead of the law, until they are always eventually caught.  

Our area was the wild west until electricity arrived in the 1940's, and being close to the county border always was an escape route for bootleggers, moonshiners and nowadays, the meth burglars.

Mike and I were always laughing about the antics of these idiots.  Keep in mind this was right about the beginning of the rise in copper prices, where six digit damages were occurring to air conditioning units for $200 in copper scrap.

Well, Boo was apparently getting into the "production" sector of the meth mess.  Unlike the knuckleheads whose apartments or trailers reeked of fumes, somehow Boo was escaping detection for over a year.  

He was pretty much a ghost, whereabouts unknown until the night they busted two of his cousins about a mile away, in the house vacated by Boo's recently deceased mother, their aunt.

Paranoia must have hit Boo in a big way.

All the mystery dissolved, how and where he was "cooking the meth" when around 2 a.m. on a weeknight a pickup emerged from deep in the woods behind his mother's house, pulling a heavy metal bathtub behind it with a chain.

We don't know how fast he was going that night, but could clearly see his "planned route", especially after our curiousity was so aroused, we traced the tracks of the bathtub,  from the asphalt road near his mothers, to the dirt road shortcut, then on Highway 67, toward the county line.

The Mulberry River bridge, on a US highway, was Boo's downfall, he figured he could make the 5 mile dash and presumably disappear, vanish into the maze of dirt roads in the adjoining county, and hide his treasure.  

Long story short, he didn't anticipate the noise level of the screeching and sparking metal tub provoking a 9-11 call, nor radio communications alerting the neighboring county sheriff.  There was a minor standoff at the roadblock on the other side of the river, and for his beligerance, not only was busted for meth production, evading and eluding, but damages caused by the tub banging into the concrete barrier on the side of federal property, namely said bridge.

According to Mike, the brew was still cooking in the tub while the pursuit took place.  Therefore, Hazmat had to be called in, and the US highway was detoured for 6 hours, including some kind of investigation of the river 30 feet below.

Boo was one of those types who will benefit from incarceration, he somehow finagled his way into the better federal penal system, by first copping a plea to the federal charge, thereby avoiding the sweatshop Alabama prison camps.

The Flint Journal reported Monday that nearly 400 cast iron covers and grates have been taken from streets in the past year. A cover can fetch $20 from a scrap yard but can cost the city more than $200 to replace.

Officials in neighboring Burton say they've lost about 200 covers and grates during the same period. Utilities supervisor Mike Holzer says it leaves behind holes up to 35 feet deep.

Mike and I were riffing on "so and so" surviving on $100 a week in metal thefts, suddenly having a $600 score and having "nothing to do for a month".

Combining these with the true Boo story, I said "don't let the meth heads hear about manhole covers and the Chinese demand for scrap metal"....That just got us thinking of various screenplays.

In our scenario, pickups were dangling 3 or four chains from the backs of pickup trucks, and because they were so 24/7 awake and alert, they would divert small town police forces with accomplices on one side of town, while the pickup with the chains linked up manhole covers and sewer grates, escaping in the other direction.

For instance, Team A would open chicken house doors in one end of town, a stampede of chickens keeping the police busy, while Team B scooped up the covers, got out of town, and tossed the covers over a bridge, they could drag them out later from this handy hideout stash.

We must have kept up the "diversion" angles for weeks, because more and more elaborate ruses would develop as we and our friends would pick up news of the other idiots getting caught.

I have always contended the US could pay off it's debt to China by selling all the manhole covers as scrap, once a fiberglass substitute was developed.

Needless to say, gov't officials didn't take my suggestion, instead redesigned the same heavy metal covers with a different "locking device", thinking they can outsmart criminals who have more time and energy than they have.

Genesee County officials say they've been able to reduce thefts of county-owned covers by outfitting them with a bolt that is turned by a wrench only they have.

Only they have, until some future day when the local sewer worker loses the wrench in a poker game.