Late Night Coffee

If memory serves me it must have been a Friday night sometime after my 21st birthday. Ray and I had been to a bar shooting pool and drinking beer until we almost were out of money. Which was very typical of the sort of thing we did on weekends. Both of us were almost always broke or close to it but at the end of this night out we had a couple of bucks left. We were walking back to the apartment on State Street in South Salt Lake, it was cold but not too cold. No ice or snow like there usually would be in October. But it was cold enough that a hot cup of coffee from Winchell's Donuts was very appealing. Back then a cup of coffee was only 60 cents and I think we had about two bucks left between us. The Winchell's store we were about to enter was not very big. The customer area was no greater than 15' x 10'. Not exact but probably pretty close. When you walked into the store you would be at the counter in about three steps. We had no sooner taken one of those three steps when a person at the counter turned around and told us, in no uncertain terms, to "get the hell out of here". I knew he was serious because all I saw was the barrel of a snubby pointing at me or at Ray but to me it was pointing in my direction. Definitely not a time to argue when looking down the barrel. I was sure it was a Dirty Harry hand cannon at the time. He of course did not have to ask twice as we turned and bolted for safety into the blackness behind the store. We ran until we could run no more only stopping after our lungs were dieing and our hearts were about to cave in. This would be the first time a gun was pointed at me but not the last. When it happens, if you get the time to ponder it anyway, the gun is about all you will see. Nothing else comes into focus. It appears larger than it really is after all Dirty Harry carried a .44 magnum not a .38 snub nose. But just the same death can come from the barrel of either and I wasn't about to find out that night. When we returned to the apartment about twenty minutes later, Ray looked at me and said something about he thought he went to High School with that guy but wasn't sure. We never called the police. Ray was too paranoid that the guy would send someone to find him if we did. I hope they caught him.