STORY BEHIND THE POEM
FIGHT NIGHT
.
Things had been pretty calm
for a Saturday night in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. Ken Lemckurt
(star of the poem Lemckurt Lament) was working
with the newly graduated Charlene Vilkas (formerly Meyer and star
of the poem The Champ). It seems she was a little impatient for
some action, for she mentioned the dread Q word
about 8 times. Sure enough it worked.
.
A bar fight was called in,
down in Gastown and Ken and Charlene were responding. On the way,
they got sidetracked by another fight spilling out of another bar.
One patron, pepper sprayed another and ran across the street. Charlene
stayed to deal with the sprayee, while Ken chased down the sprayer.
While he was talking to her, her girlfriend came up and started mouthing
off at Ken. Not a smart move at the best of times, but here, even
dumber. Ken stands between 64 tall and weighs in about 230 pounds
of muscle. A policeman for 10 years and in the military before that.
The mouthy one was a tiny female about 51 tall and 90 pounds if her pockets
were full of rocks.
.
Ken turned to her to explain
he was conducting an investigation and if she continued to interfere, she
would be arrested and charged with obstruction. As the word obstruction
was forming on his lips, this tiny little girl reared back and punched
Ken in the face. We looked around, but could not find the step ladder
she had to have climbed up to do it.
.
Ken sustained either a fractured
or dislocated jaw from the incident, but the whole time I was there, he
was laughing and giggling about it. He said that as soon as I drove
up, he could picture the coming poem. So here it is, with Kens blessing
of course.
.
On March 6, I spoke to Ken
who was back at work. He reports that X-Rays showed that his jaw
was not broken or dislocated. The Doctor advised him that it was
more a soft tissue injury from the impact. Ken is doing fine now,
but he had a pretty sore jaw for a few days.
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