For three consecutive summers from 1995 to 1997, I was an outdoor dramatist. I worked as an actor and technician at a historical drama site in Snow Camp NC, about 20 miles from anywhere. Much of what I experienced was positive (if you over look the broken arm, busted nose, constant laryngitis, etc.), but there was one incident that occurred in the summer of 1995 which haunts me to this very day. Indeed, no one who was there that night will ever forget the Incident on Franklin Street (cue dramatic music).

It was a "performance night" and we had just finished a performance of Pathway to Freedom, a drama about the Underground Railroad. As many of us were walking to our cars to return to our company house, a couple of kids began taunting some of us, saying they were from the Ku Klux Klan. A couple of people were unnerved by them, but the fact that these kids were 11, and that they were riding bicycles, didn’t exactly pose a serious threat. Nonetheless, the proper authorities were called and they took care of the situation. Before the night was over, many of us would wish that had been the worst of our problems that night.

After going home, a group of us decided to go to nearby Chapel Hill. One of the actors worked part-time at a bar called Papagallo’s, and he invited us to come, hang out, hear a band and chill at his place later. A group of about 15 of us took him up on it, and so we came to "the Hill" ready to party.

And party we did! I can’t speak too much for others, but I can honestly say I got a bit schnockered during the course of the evening. We danced, drank and enjoyed the relatively cool night air until the bar closed, sometime around 2am.

Still in the mood to see the town, our group had to make a choice: Waffle House or Time Out, a 24-hour chicken joint. We chose Time Out by majority vote, even though I was aching for a nice double order of hash browns. Looking back, I wish I had instituted a little rebellion.

There we were in Time Out, surrounded by UNC memorabilia, eating greasy chicken, enjoying our respective buzzes, and having a good time in general. At one point, one of our group (I won’t mention her name) staggered to the ladies’ room and didn’t come back. Someone else went to check on her and said Miss X had locked herself in a stall and couldn’t figure out how to get out. We then decided it would be really funny to go out and hide in the parking lot and make her think we had left her there.

At this point, I should mention that one of the guys in our group, Chris B, was part of the publicity committee in our company, and his job involved planting and passing out flyers for our dramas wherever he went. Trust me, this’ll become important in about two paragraphs.

Anyway, there we were, hiding behind cars in the Time Out parking lot and giggling like a cloud of second graders over our stuck-in-the-bathroom comrade’s predicament, when we hear this voice yelling out "Which one of you motherf%#&ers put this s%*t in my car?" We arose as one to face a man, 6’5", about 300 lbs., and pissed off that some motherf%#&er had put some s%*t in his car.

We all denied putting anything in his car, let alone any s%*t, until he reached through he open window of his black BMW and pulled out a flyer. Chris B had apparently seen the open window and placed a flyer in the driver’s seat, knowing that whoever drove the car would have to pick up the flyer, if nothing else to move it out of the way. Chris hadn’t counted on this, though. He tried to retrieve the flyer from the man, apologizing profusely and saying it wold never happen again. The man would hear nothing of it, and began cursing at the world in general about us.

Suddenly a girl in our group, Jasme’ walked up and got in the thug’s face. Jasme’ was usually blissful, but now she was irate. The two of them jawed at one another for a while, until she decided to take a drink of her iced tea. As she raised her cup, the thug slapped her hand, causing tea to fly everywhere. He then returned to the security guard to tell him "Look, they’re throwing s%*t at me!"

We convinced Jasme’ that this would be a good time to get in her car and drive away. She did, but on her way to the car she dropped her keys. She bent down and picked them up, slowly. When she got to her car, she opened her door and got in. Slowly. Clearly, she was trying to bait our friendly neighborhood thug, and he responded in kind. He picked up a beer bottle and threw it at her car as she was backing out. Luckily, the bottle only bounced off her hood, and she drove away.

The thug then turned back to the security guard and kept yelling at him. Either this rent-a-cop had had dealings with this guy before, or he was stoned out of his mind, because he just sat there, listening. He never told the thug to shut up, and never chastised us for doing the things that the "big man" claimed we were doing to him.

Finally, we decided to let it all go and walk back to our cars, which were in the municipal parking garages a few blocks away. We took off, leaving the thug to his one-sided argument with the rent-a-cop. About a hundred feet away, we breathed a collective sigh of relief. About half a block later, we wondered at our good fortune to get out of there without getting into a fight. After another block, we started wondering whether we could have taken the thug. Another block, and we were suddenly a new gang: the Snow Camp Brotherhood. We were cocky, confident, and cocksure that if the thug ever rolled up on us again, we could smoke him in nothing flat.

Suddenly, a car pulled up beside us. Fifteen pairs of eyes looked upon a black BMW. The passenger window rolled down and we were once again face to face with the thug. Even though the windows were tinted, it was plain to see that he had managed to round up three of his "homies". He began to curse at us, saying (and I quote), "I’m gonna shoot all your motherf%#&in’ a$$es!" Suddenly the Snow Camp Brotherhood was facing its first-ever drive-by, and we were all shaking, except for one person.

Now I think Lisa (not her real name) is a very nice person, and she has her cool moments, but if there was anyplace she needed to be in the world at the moment, that was not it. Lisa proceeded to laugh and make fun of the thug and his threats. Meantime, we were all muttering under our shaky breaths "Shut the f%#k up! This isn’t funny anymore!" But she kept on ragging him.

That is, until the thug opened his door and stepped out of the car, slowly. He walked to the rear of the car and popped open his trunk. Slowly. He reached in and…

To be honest, I can’t legally say what he went for in the trunk. Maybe he had a stash of candy and balloons that he was going to give us. Maybe he would have given us those presents, hugged us each around the neck and said "I’m just messin’ with ya! You guys are all right. C’mon, let’s go back to Time Out, my treat!" And then we would have formed a bond of friendship that would have changed the world.

Then again, we were probably right in running in abject fear of being mowed down by whatever barely legal firearm he had in his trunk.

Fifteen bodies ran down the street, bypassing the Gap and ducking down the alley that ran beside the Carolina Theater. We jumped a wall and scampered to find hiding places. Now, when I went back to the spot after the fact, the wall was about 2 ft. tall, just enough to slow us down a bit. However, in the days, months, and years since the Battle of Franklin St, the wall has grown and grown until, according to some, it was 25ft tall, with razor wire and vicious guard dogs defending it. Ah, embellishment!

After a couple of minutes, a pair of headlights crept into the empty lot we were hiding in. Chris B and I (who were hiding behind a dumpster) took off, and ran down another alleyway, back to Franklin St. There was no one on the street at all, not even a police car, which was odd, considering they had been cruising up and down the street all night long. Then again, it was 3am.

Chris and I ran across to the municipal garage, and to his car. We got in, and I lay down in the back seat. I wasn’t taking any chances. We headed out the garage and immediately headed for the apartment building that we were all supposed to go to at the end of the evening.

Once we got there, most of us had proceeded to drink again, and began to make jokes about the Battle. I was still petrified though. The laughing stopped when we realized that no one had bothered to retrieve the flyer from the thug! Suddenly we began to make plans to have at least one of the black powder rifles we used in the next night’s show loaded with live ammo, just in case he decided to come to Snow Camp.

Turns out we didn’t need it. The thug never showed up. I guess he slept it off, or was talked down, or felt guilty about threatening us like that. Maybe he got arrested later that night and couldn’t get out; who knows?

As I write this, it is the fifth anniversary of that fateful night, or thereabouts. I think about that night once in a while, and I can’t help but smile. Just the image of fifteen actors being scared by one very large man with a nasty temper and a mystery trunk is kinda funny in a way. It sure wasn’t back then, though. I think I still have the underwear I soiled that night locked away, for posterity. Maybe when I build the Clint McGuire museum, it’ll be displayed (in an odorproof box) right next to my casts and the baseball I was hit in the nose with during my first summer in Snow Camp.

But those are other stories.

Clint McGuire would like the thug to know (if he’s actually reading this/having this read to him) "No hard feelings!" However, if someone pulls up alongside you, dear reader, in a black BMW with tinted windows, and a large angry man asks you where the f&*k I am, run. Then e-mail me at aeolina66@hotmail.com and warn me, mmmkay?

Ó 2000, Clint McGuire