Because of an increase in armed robberies at the gas station, they had acquired a really big, really fierce German shepherd attack dog.
He seemed like the type that could only be happy with a detached human arm or human leg in his mouth.
For whatever reason, the dog kind of liked me -- Rise` will tell you that animals always kind of like me -- but I was a rare exception. Every time I was in the gas station, the dog went wild with demonic rage when a customer came in with his or her car, and pulled on its heavy chain, attached to the concrete with a big lag screw, to try to get at the customer and test whether it could rip off an arm or leg, I think to gnaw on it as a kind of puppy treat.
On this particular night, a heavyset woman came into the gas station and requested a fill-up. For whatever reason, the attack dog went completely wild when the woman got out of her car. The dog clearly wanted her dead. He jerked and pulled on the chain, screaming with insane rage at her presence.
Suddenly, the lag screw holding the dog's chain to the concrete broke. The attack dog bounded across the gas station pavement at a high speed, clearly intent on ripping out the woman's throat.
Instead of retreating into her car's open door, the woman stayed outside of her car and froze, with her back to the car, appearing thoroughly frightened.
The gas jockey on duty, a young Green Carder from the Punjab section of northwest India who spoke pretty good English, turned around and bolted toward the woman like the wind, closing-in on her about as fast as the attack dog.
The attack dog came within jumping distance of the woman. He leapt up and was air-borne, his mouth wide open, his teeth bared, his head rotating slowly as he flew so that his fangs would sink into the woman's throat perfectly. It was my good guess that the frightened woman was about to have her carotids ripped-out and that she would die.
The gas jockey arrived at the woman at the same moment the attack dog did.
Just before the dogs teeth ripped out her throat, maybe one-half second before, the gas jockey made a fist and smashed the German shepherd in the face, knocking the dog sideways down to the pavement.
The gas jockey then grabbed the hate-crazed attack dog's chain, and pulled the screaming animal by its chain to the other gas pump island, and chained it to a metal pole, there.
He then returned to the shaking woman, whose life he had just saved, and apologized to her.
I then saw something amazing.
The heavyset woman turned-around to her open car door, took out her purse, took a pad of what I knew to be legal summonses -- like traffic tickets -- out of her purse, announced that she was a representative of the SPCA, asked the brave-but-naive gas jockey his name, wrote it on the summons, and issued him a ticket for assault on a dog!!!
Now, I'm not perfect. When I was a kid, I wasn't exactly gentle with the non-human phyla we encountered in the Frankford section of Philadelphia. We had hamsters as pets, and we used to build mazes for them to get through. We used to pile up sheets and blankets, shove the hamsters into cardboard paper towel tubes, and fire them like darts from blowguns out of the tubes onto the blankets, watching their little feetsees shake wildly as they flew. We used to capture honeybees in jars, and imprison them in a glass aquarium, until we had thousands of enraged bees buzzing crazily in the aquarium, looking for a human to kill. We even put a live sandshark in Frankford Creek to get it out of a friend's bathtub ...
http://frankfordgazette.com/2011/08/18/sharks-sharks-sharks-in-frankford-creek/
So, maybe I'm not a good guy to judge.
But giving that gas jockey an SPCA ticket for assault on that attack dog to save the woman's life was about the meanest, lowest, most evil act of hypocrisy I had ever seen!
I walked up to the woman and said, "Ma'am, what I just saw was an act of unbelievable ingratitude. He just saved your life! Are you insane?
"I'm an attorney, and I'm going to represent this young hero on this matter. I'm going to go after you in court, and get you, and destroy you for this evil act. I swear to you that you're going to pay him for this criminal charge -- he's not paying anything. And I'm going to embarrass the Hell out you!
"If I need to, I'm going to resign as his attorney, and testifty to the court in his case about what a distinctly disgusting, utterly horrible and ungrateful human being you are!"
The SPCA representative looked at me with an evil facade, paid for her gas, and left.
I told the gas station owner about the gas jockey's quick action and bravery, and explained to him what my appraoch would be as his defense attorney, and sent in my letter of representation, to the Magnolia Municipal Court and to the SPCA.
The woman FTA'd ("failed to appear") once. Twice. Thrice. At the third hearing, the court dismissed the charge against the young man "with prejudice" (meaning, "it can't be resurrected").
I immediately jumped-up and made a motion for $1,000 in attorneys fees and court costs against the SPCA, relating to the court how this young man had saved the woman's life and then had to answer to an evil criminal summons for saving her life.
The court denied my motion, saying that in light of the 3 FTA's, he was sympathetic, but would not award attorneys fees against an eleemosynary ("charitable") organization like the SPCA. He said, however, that he would award "costs" to the court -- a nominal sum.
I responded, "Well, make it high -- for three court appearances!"
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