River Race

 A radio station in Columbia in 1980 on a Saturday sponsored a river race down the Congaree in Columbia.  The main rule was that the boat had to be homemade.  You could use wood and floats, but nothing professional.  Those of us at the Census thought it would be fun if we entered.
 We built our "boat" out of plywood and inner tubes.  We tested it out and found that it would float with four people on it, so we loaded it on a car and headed to the starting line which was upstream from the city.  We were on the West Columbia side and put it into the water.  It was also important that this craft held our cooler full of beer.
 As we were floating in the current, it was hot but the beer was cold.  We started drinking and really didn't care anymore about winning the race.  We got into the waters of the Congaree River and quickly ran into two problems.  First, the rocks in the river caused us to get hung up.  The Congaree is not very deep, so we had one of our crew responsible for jumping out and getting us off the rocks.  That was a full-time job.  The second problem was that the plywood was falling apart.  It became clear that we would not make it to the finish line.
 Another thing we learned was that the Congaree did not fall under any local police jurisdiction.  As long as we stayed in the river, we could drink and smoke dope as much as we liked.  The problem was that we had to get off of the river, especially with our "boat" falling apart.  We were coming under a railroad trestle and saw officers taking pictures and making notes of offenders.  We decided to make our landing in a part of the shore we knew the police would not be waiting for us, so we made land in some woods on the Cayce side.
 We gave up on hauling our "boat" up the hill from the water, so we just left it to sink.  We got up the hill from the river and found a guy with a van.  Three of us asked him to take us back to our cars, which were parked at Brookland Cayce High School.  He was nice to do so, especially because we were all stoned and drunk, and we were trying to evade the police.
 I got to the school and proceeded to break into the school looking for a bathroom.  I got in through an open window to take care of business.  When I finished and was walking around the building, my friends were waiting for me in the parking lot.  Just then, a Cayce police car pulled up.  The officer got out and approached us.  He asked one friend, "Son, have you been drinking?"  My friend replied, "No, sir".  He was immediately arrested.  He then asked my other friend the same thing.  My friend replied the same way, and he was arrested.  He then asked me the same thing.  I replied the same way, but he didn't arrest me.  To this day, I don't know why I was not arrested.  He let me get in my car and drive home.  I was scared straight.  I still did it a few times after that, but not binging.  I am just glad that the officer didn't ask about the open window at the school.