Getting a foot in the door

The scene on the 6 o’clock network news was comical, although I suppose you might have to have a perverse sense of humor to think so.

In Washington, D.C., smoke was pouring from an office building that included offices used by Vice President Dick Cheney. Firetrucks were on the scene, firemen were working on the problem, office workers had been evacuated and sent home for the remainder of the day.

The camera panned to the building’s front entrance featuring a huge door, closed, as were windows immediately adjacent. A fireman was whaling away at one of the windows with a fire ax and I’m sitting in my living room thinking the guy could probably save himself a lot of work if he would just reach to his right and open the damn door.

Let the record show that I realize the man was presumably not trying to enter the building by smashing a window set hard against the unlocked front door of the joint. My firefighting friends probably would explain to me that the window-bashing tactic is accepted practice in such smoky situations, for ventilation purposes, perhaps, or for other reasons that I may well be too numb to comprehend.

But that first mangled assessment of the situation is what my imagination glommed onto, and considering that no one was hurt in the incident, I thought it was pretty funny. The more so since Cheney and President Bush turned the situation into a photo opportunity by approaching firemen to thank them for saving the day. Never underestimate the ability of a politician to turn a situation to his or her advantage, no matter the circumstances.

The tableau featuring the ax-wielding window basher brought to mind those old Boston Blackie detective movies that ran in serial format, if memory serves, when I was a kid and occasionally would get to attend the Saturday matinee oaters starring Hopalong Cassidy or one of his Wild West contemporaries that regularly played at my hometown theater.

To be honest, I can’t remember if Boston Blackie was a good guy or a bad guy. I tend to remember him as the former. But it was a long time ago, so you’ll have to cut me some slack in the matter.

What I do remember with conviction is that the good-guy crime-fighter in those serialized warm-ups to the main feature never met the door that he couldn’t kick off its hinges if he suspected there were bad guys lurking beyond. God only knows what the films’ budget for doors must have been, although I think it’s safe to say that it was obviously greater than the budget for talent.

Even at my then-tender age in those halcyon days of yore, I would wonder what might happen should the serial’s hero one day, just for the hell of it, try to open the door by turning the doorknob. Probably it would have so shocked the villains lying in wait that it would have thrown them off their underhanded game of messing with the heroes, and there would have gone the plot, such as it was.

In any case, Boston Blackie went on kicking down most every door that stood between him and his mission to rid the world of slimeball criminals. For all I know, he may still be doing so today, although likely in a better place, considering that, if still alive, he would be roughly 112 years old.

My mind flashed to the busted-door syndrome again when I read a newspaper story out of Fond du Lac, Wis., about a teenage driver who was stopped by police on suspicion of drunken driving.

The kid made a break for it, and in the ensuing police chase he drove through a carwash – the theory being, I presume, that the cops would never recognize the sparkling clean car that emerged as the feloniously dirty one that had entered. The chase ended farther down the road after officers had used a spiked mat and a stun gun to bring things to a screeching halt.

Why the cops did not simply wait at the other end of the carwash establishment for their quarry to slowly emerge into their custody, the story did not say. Perhaps the kid chose to forgo a wash job and made a quick dry run through the place, cops at his heels. Or maybe, like Boston Blackie, the cops would never be caught in the equivalent of opening a door the conventional way when they could have the pleasure of kicking it off its hinges while shouting “Merry Christmas.”

BDN columnist Kent Ward lives in Limestone. Readers may reach him by e-mail at olddawg@bangordailynews.net.