Skateboard (now stolen) Detail

Skateboard Detail, originally uploaded by Paul Hehn.

Tonight around 10:15 or so we had a little excitement: a couple of seedy-looking dudes tried to camp out on our front porch and we had to call the cops.

I was in the basement, Iris was on the couch in the living room and Amy was upstairs in our bedroom. I heard a noise and looked at my TV monitor to see what was on the front porch. There was some guy there!

I ran upstairs and opened the door and said, "Hey, what the hell are you doing? Get off my porch!"

He turned around to face me. He was carrying a big plastic tarp (army green), and I noticed a white blanket on the porch. He said, "Ah, man... we're just lookin' for someplace to lie down."

That's when I noticed there was another guy already lying down, in the corner to my left. The guy with the tarp was kind of big, with black hair and a black beard and a baseball cap. He was barely coherent, but he was argumentative. The other guy skedaddled when I said I'd have to call the cops if they didn't leave.

They showed no signs of leaving, so I said I'd call the cops, and I shut the door. I grabbed the phone, then yelled upstairs to Amy to call the police. I kept an eye on the guys on the porch while she called. This dude just wouldn't shut up, and he woudn't leave. He said things like "a real person would say hello" and "just open the door so we can talk," and he mocked me with "I'm calling the cops, I'm calling the cops."

Once it was clear to him that we HAD called the cops, he hobbled off the porch in a hurry and ran up the street. We quickly enough noticed that he'd taken Iris's skateboard with him, the bastard.

Officer Tony Wilson of the Portland Police Bureau showed up about ten minutes later, too my information, apologized for being so late in coming, and told me he'd look around the park.

I was pretty dumbfounded at the idea that these fellers thought they could just camp out on our front porch.

That bastard took the skateboard out of pure meanness.

UPDATE:  Officer Wilson came by with some youngish guy he'd picked up.  "Is this the guy?" he asked me.  "Nope, that's not him," I said.  I saw some regular-looking guy with a little beard, carrying a sleeping bag.

"Okay, well, he said he wasn't, but he kind of fit your description."  No, he didn't, except that he was carrying a bundled sleeping bag.

As I was closing the door I heard Officer Wilson ask the guy, "okay, where do you want to go?"  The guy said, "well, I was just walking over to a friend's house to spend the night...."  Poor guy!