In a scene straight out of Alice's Restaurant, the Portsmouth Police mobilized all its resources to save this seaside town from the next big terrorist attack.
It all began when a passenger on a Portland, Maine to New York City Greyhound overheard another passenger, speaking on a cell phone and she heard "There's a bomb on this bus." Now, I wasn't on the bus at the time, but if news reports are to be believed (and I realize what I'm asking here) the guy on the phone was speaking Swahili. I'm not sure if there's a Swahili sentence that sounds like, "There's a bomb on this bus" which actually means, "This bus is a bummer, " or "I hope I can get a bagel in Portsmouth, but it is New Hampshire. I'm not sure they even know what a bagel is in New Hampshire," or words to that effect.
So the concerned citizen, being aware of the Times Square attempt, calls 9-11 and the Portsmouth SWAT team surrounds the bus and the news media swarms and we are all watching events unfold from our computers at the hospital and the patients are watching on their bedside TV's, everyone wondering if we are going to be the next Times Square, and a town which doesn't even shrug when President Obama walks down the street during primary season, and people actually walk the other way rather than having to talk to John McCain or Mitt Romney because they get tired of all the attention, suddenly everyone is all a twitter about getting national attention.
But it's more than national attention we are worried about. We don't want our town blown up.
And we recognize that right after New York City, we are a very high value target.
North Church on Market Square was where Daniel Webster hung out and even George Washington slept there right there in the front pew. So there would be big time symbolism blowing up Portsmouth.
They clear out all the restaurants and bars and they seal off the downtown parking garage so nobody can drive home and everyone just has to watch and wait and wonder if we are next in the war on terrorism, or actually that was last year's tag, the effort to contain radical fundamentalism.
That's us, right there on the vanguard.
But, it was not to be. No bomb.
Not to feel too bad for the police, because in the sweep they did reel in two potential threats to domestic security. The first was some guy from Maine who "pulled away" from a police officer leading him away from the bus and was charged with resisting arrested after they "Tazed" him twice for the crime of riding on a Greyhound bus and being unpleasant about having to leave it with his hands held above his head.
The other guy, I have never met, but I liked him just from the reports. This guy is Black, and from Brooklyn, which must make New Hampshire pretty terrifying, but he also had a guilty conscience because he knew he had paper on him, an arrest warrant for riding his bicycle on the sidewalk and for smoking blunt. (It was not clear where he had been accused of these heinous deeds, but I'm doubtful it was Portsmouth because they are pretty laid back here about bicycles on sidewalks, as long as you don't run over any tourists.)
Now, I'm from New Hampshire, so I'm not sure what blunt is, but from the context I imagine it's something that's bad for your health. But no, that would be tobacco. So maybe it's something not bad for your health but illegal, like marijuana. Whatever, the guy knew he was in trouble, but unlike the guy from Maine, he was very pleasant and apologized a lot, so actually the police did not Taze him and simply charged him with giving a false name.
That, you might suspect, is a rare charge in Portsmouth, where giving a false name would not help much because the policeman probably went to high school with you, unless you are from Brooklyn.
But Portsmouth is actually a town accustomed to tourists and people from out of state. So the police are trained, they were at pains to emphasize, to deal with all sorts of different people, except for people from Massachusetts, who tend to be frequently unpleasant and pretty obnoxious.
Brooklyn, we are okay with.
Where was I?
Oh, two arrests, no bomb, The North Church saved. The Portsmouth Brewery unscathed.
And the police got to use all the SWAT team stuff they'd had not unfolded since it was bought.
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