On Friday night I drove to our favorite hangout to be with my friends. Our “drinking spot” was secluded by large oaks in the northwest corner of Boaz Park, bordered by Mary’s Creek and the riding stables. I didn’t like the taste of beer or how it made me feel, but drinking made me part of the crowd. Holding a can in my hand, I could laugh and enjoy the night out with the guys and gals.
By 10:30 the party was in full swing. David Bar’s eight-track stereo played edgy guitar with thought-provoking lyrics from The White Album by the Beatles. The cool spring evening smelled of honeysuckle mixed with smoke from the crackling campfire. A debate raged over which Beatles album was the best. Some insisted Sergeant Pepper was at the top, but others said The White Album was better. Neither side showed signs of surrender.
The click-click of the tape deck indicated a switch back to the first song on side one—“Back in the USSR.” The debate ended with mutual agreement that this was a great song. At the opening notes, beer cans were lifted high and feet moved with the beat. The tune made us feel how lucky we were.
“This is the police!” The voice came from the shadows of the riding stables. “Stay right where you are!”
Suddenly we didn’t feel so lucky. The tape deck went silent. The toe tapping stopped. We would have run, but we had been warned. Every eye was focused on the three spotlights that looked like a train bearing down upon our tracks.
“This is the police!” the voice said again. “Don’t move. Stay right where you are.”
Three police cars surrounded us, their headlights on bright. The sergeant got out of his car and motioned to two officers. “Take everyone’s driver’s license.” He looked at us like we were foolish children. “Line up the boys on my right and the girls over here.” He pointed left, to a spot separate from the boys. After scanning the stack of driver’s licenses, he said, “Everyone here is under arrest for being a minor in possession of alcohol. You’ll be taken to the city jail.”
Bill left our group and approached the sergeant. “Officer, please, it’s our beer, not the ladies’. Take us, but please don’t take them to jail.” He pointed toward his girlfriend. “I love her, and if her daddy has to get her out of jail, I’m as good as dead.” The girl’s tears made her cheeks glisten under the spotlights. With tears in his own eyes, he turned to the sergeant. “Please, sir.” His pleading reminded me of Scarlett O’Hara begging for money to pay the tax on her plantation in Gone with the Wind. A professional actor could not have done better.
The sergeant gathered the girls next to his car and gave them a lecture about underage drinking. “If I ever catch you drinking again, I won’t be this generous.” He welcomed the girls’ Oscar-winning sweet replies of “yes, sir” and “thank you, sir.” The gruff sergeant transformed into a loving grandfather. He gave them their driver’s licenses and allowed them to go.
After seeing how the girls had fared, Bill became a masterful politician. Every plea for mercy began with “please, officer” or “I promise.” I thought we might have a chance of being released until Bruce let out a long line of expletives and insulted the ancestry of one of the officers. He was promptly handcuffed and put in the back seat of one of the police cars, where he vomited against the window glass. After that, he must have felt better, because he laid his head against the chunky stench and fell sound asleep.
The night had been busy for the Fort Worth police. The sergeant called for transport several times, but no wagons were available. He asked for wreckers to tow our cars, but they weren’t available either. We sat and waited, talking about sports and the Vietnam war. Even the two junior officers were restless. After two hours, four wreckers showed up to tow five cars.
The sergeant pointed at me. “You! Come here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How much have you had to drink tonight?”
“A c‑couple of beers.”
“Step over here. Close your eyes and put your index finger on the tip of your nose.”
I had seen this drill before.
“Now walk in a straight line, heel to toe. Go to where the officer is standing by the police car.” He thumbed through his stack of licenses. “What’s your last name?”
“J‑Johnson.”
“Albert Johnson?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. You drive your car to the city jail. Do you know where the jail is?”
I nodded.
“Park on Lamar Street. Go inside, and report to the desk sergeant. Johnson, if you run, I have your driver’s license and will issue a warrant for your arrest. I will personally see that you spend time in jail. Do you understand?”
“Y‑yes, sir.”
As I turned toward my car, he grabbed my shoulder and spun me around. “Johnson,” he said, “mess with me and you’ll lose.”
I assured him I would do exactly as he said.
On the way to the jail, I wondered how Bruce was doing. Imagining the smell inside that police car made me feel sick. I had seen the police raid other beer parties. They never hauled everybody to jail. They made us pour the beer on the ground and let us go. If Bruce hadn’t cursed the cops, the sergeant probably wouldn’t have arrested us.
I knew better than to smart off to a cop. When I was in the fourth grade, Mom was zooming down East Rosedale in our blue and white ’58 Ford Crown Victoria. The windows were down, the radio up, and she was driving like we were on a freeway. The cop who pulled us over said she had run the red light at Evans Street. She protested, saying the light was yellow.
“Ma’am,” the officer said, “you shouldn’t argue with me.”
Mom had been drinking, which not only meant she wasn’t a good judge of traffic lights, she also didn’t know when to keep quiet. Her next words were “hell fuzzy,” a phrase she often used when her anger was rising and she was about to unleash a barrage of insults. She spared no details about what she thought of him, his family, and every person he knew. Mom had a gift. She could string a dozen curse words together without ever repeating herself, and she was in fine form. Five minutes later, she was sitting handcuffed in the back seat of the patrol car, and we were headed for jail.
If Mom hadn’t cursed the officer, she probably would have gotten a ticket, but not a trip to the slammer. I learned a valuable lesson that night: it never pays to be disrespectful to a police officer.
Evidently, Bruce hadn’t learned that lesson. The rest of us were paying the price for his being an idiot.
I parked my car on Lamar and reported to the desk sergeant. “My name is Albert Johnson, and I was told by Sergeant S‑stallings that I was to report to you.”
The desk sergeant handed me a brown envelope. “Put your valuables in the envelope and write your name across the top.” He led me though the double doors and down the hall to a jail cell holding forty-five men.
Yellow steel bunks without mattresses were bolted two-high against the wall opposite the jail cell gate. The smell reminded me of the locker room at the school gym. Half the men sat on the steel bunks, and a dozen were looking out the cell bars. Seven men either had passed out or were asleep on the floor.
“Yo, Wayne, over here.” Bill pushed his way through the crowd. “Come on, we’re over here.”
“Man, it’s nice of you to join us.” Sam looked at Bruce, sprawled out next to the wall, snoring away, small chunks of barf clinging to his hair. “That’s the best he has sounded all night.”
“How many of us did they bring to jail?”
“Eight of us, including sleeping beauty over there. You make nine.”
Men were visiting with one another, swapping stories, and finding out why they were in jail. It was more like a party than a lockup.
Bill looked at me like he had thought of an escape plan. “Hey, Wayne. How about some hamboning?”
“Yeah,” Jerry said, “That’s a great idea.” He invited others to come and see, as if this should be a ticketed event. “You guys have got to see this. Circle up. We’re fixin’ to have some hamboning.”
Bill pushed me toward the middle of the cell. “Give us some hamboning.”
The men looked mystified. “Hamboning? What’s that?”
My heart began to pound. Hamboning in the Fort Worth City Jail? In front of these men? I had never had such a captive audience before.
Hamboning received public attention in 1969 on the CBS hillbilly comedy show Hee Haw. Jackie Phelps hamboned while his partner Jimmy Riddle eephed, a bizarre cross between hiccupping and a rhythmic wheeze.
I had learned to hambone back in the eighth grade and took second place in the hamboning contest at the roller skating rink. I was better than the guy who won, but he spun around and skated backward past the judges. It’s hard to beat a backward-skating hamboner. How had he kept his balance? If I had been the judge, he would have been my choice for first place too.
Here I was, in the middle of the Fort Worth city jail’s drunk tank, surrounded by curious men who had never seen such a rare display of talent. Good hamboning has three important elements: rhythm, repetition, and variety. To get the rhythm going, I tapped my right foot and added the foundational move of tapping my chest with the inside of my fingers. I lowered my arm and slapped the top of my leg with the back of my fingers. Keeping in rhythm, I added the cross-legged slap and forearm-to-bicep move.
The men came closer, wide-eyed, with huge grins. Their feet kept pace with my rhythm, a sure sign that they were in sync with me.
I repeated the hamboning moves, but in reverse order, giving the appearance of an entirely unique routine. After five minutes, I finished with two mouth pops.
The cell erupted with whoops and hollers and, “Way to go, Wayne.”
Two guards heard the ruckus and came to see what was going on.
Inmates rushed to the cell bars. “You got to see this, officer.” Another man said, “Yes sir. This is something else, I tell you. You got to see this man playing drums on his body.”
The officer grinned. “Well, let’s see what you got, young man. Show me what caused all the commotion.”
I was warmed up and ready. With my left foot tapping, I was about to make the first leg slap when I had to stop.
“Hold it. Hold it!” The jailor couldn’t see. “You men need to move to the side.”
The men moved, allowing a clear view for the officer.
This time I began at a slower tempo so I could include a heel-tap move, which sounds best when the pace isn’t too fast. After the heel tap, I increased the tempo and floated into the same routine as before. After four minutes, I closed with two mouth pops and a six-step foot stomp.
Whistles and applause echoed off the steel walls.
“Settle down men. Settle down.” The guards were grinning at me when they left the cell area.
The men in the cell chanted, “Encore! Encore!”
“Thank you, men. My legs and chest are stinging like severe sunburn. Hamboning can be tough on a tender body.”
Everyone laughed.
“Seriously, I need a few minutes to let my legs recover from the beating.” That statement brought another round of applause.
A man who looked like his hair hadn’t been cut in a year came to me. “Say, man. That’s cool. Show me how to do that ham thing.”
“Sure, I can do that.” Standing beside him, I demonstrated the fundamental hambone move of chest-to-leg and back.
While he made an awkward attempt at the maneuver, his friend laughed like we were in the midst of an improvisational comedy routine. While still snickering, the friend said, “Show me how to do that.” They laughed with each flailing of their arms as they tried their best to land the backs of their hands onto the tops of their legs.
Another man asked, “How did you do that? Where do you hit first?” He tried to mimic what I had done. “Look here. Is this it?”
This time, instead of entertaining, I was giving lessons. It felt good to be helping men who were down on their luck. “Okay, first take the inside of your right hand to the top of your chest, near the collar bone.”
“Like this?” they asked.
I went to each man and showed him what to do. “Now, here’s the second part. With your right hand, tap your fingers on your right leg.” I helped each man find the spot where the topside of their fingers were to tap. “For the last part, take the underside of the fingers on your right hand and brush against the back of your leg.”
The men looked like they were beating a dirty rug with a stick. Their form didn’t matter. They were learning something new and having fun.
Bill caught my eye with a grin. “You’re a star, Wayne, king of the hambone.”
I laughed, but it was the seriousness of the moment that grabbed my attention. These were grown men enjoying life like ten-year-olds playing at recess. Although they were under arrest and in the drunk tank at the Fort Worth city jail, they were innocently waving their arms and counting 1‑2‑3 as if they didn’t have a care in the world. What had I done for them that they had been unable to do for themselves? For the moment, developing a new talent had made the past seem unimportant.
“Johnson,” the guard shouted. “Albert Johnson! On the gate.”
I raced to the far side. “I’m Albert Johnson.”
“Come with me.” He walked me along the corridor that faced the tank.
The men rushed to say, “Thank you, hambone man,” and “See you on TV, hambone man.” Some men applauded. Other whistled. The sound of hands banging against legs and chests faded as I walked down the hall. So this was how it felt to walk the red carpet at the Academy Awards. I felt like a star.
Before leaving me with the sergeant at the booking desk, the jailor said, “You’re pretty good at that slap-drumming thing. Thank you.”
I was allowed to leave after paying a $25.00 fine, but why had I been called from the cell and the other guys were still locked up? Maybe it was because I had driven my own car to jail. With my behavior, had I somehow earned the favor of people in authority? On my way home, I noticed how the red and green traffic lights governed my movement. Like the lights, I couldn’t have life the way I wanted it. Could joy exist in tough times—even in a jail cell?
In the drunk tank at the Fort Worth city jail, I had experienced one of the most satisfying times of my life. My hamboning was the focus, not my stuttering. As I told the men how to hambone, they never once noticed my stuttering. The hambone lockup was my first time on stage, and I loved the feeling.
I wondered how that talent could become more than fun at a party.