STORY BEHIND THE POEM PADDY MELD
First a little background. The truck
used by a lot of police departments is called a "Paddy Wagon" or just "Wagon"
for short. I have no idea how it came to be named that, but, if someone
does know, please email me and I will add the explanation. Also,
when a squad does not have a senior, permanent volunteer wagon driver,
the job falls on the most junior member of the squad working that day.
Sort of like "paying ones dues". This is a long standing tradition,
and each squad does it differently. Some rotate it, others pick one
member. In this case, the two squad members who are junior to Craig
were off on holidays. The job became his. Craig and Wayne had
recently become partners and had molded into a very effective team.
As most partners do when they are split for a shift, they tend to end up
at the same calls. Actually in our area, we all tend to anyway because
it is so busy. The other important part to this story is that around
Vancouver there is a popular sandwich called a "Patty Melt", something
like a cheese burger, but better.
.
On this occassion it looked like a scrap between
drunks and druggies was going to start up and the Sergeant advised radio.
Craig and Wayne arrived as cover units only to find the fight was dispersing
before it got started. Craig saw something else starting and went
to swing around to check it out. He checked his mirrors and turned
to look, then seeing no traffic he began his turn. Unfortunately
Wayne was sitting off to his left in his blind spot. They were both
rolling slowly and the wagon caught the right front corner corner of the
Ford Crown Victoria that Wayne was driving, (a brand spanking new one too).
The impact on the left front wheel of the wagon was relitively minor, but
the wagon was very old and had a lot of mileage on it. Unfortunately,
the impact snapped the A-Frame and left the wagon sitting disabled.
They tried to keep it quiet, but, when you are sitting in the middle of
a busy street with a wagon disabled, word gets around. Craig got
teased for the rest of the shift over the radio and so the poem was born.
.