Feds smell something old. Might be him.
Soon after the recent destruction of eighty-eight year old retired metallurgist Bob Wallace's business, the Feds have decided to get tough on anyone old and harmless, especially if they could be hikers.
Wallace, and his main squeeze (and reputed moll) Marjorie Ottenberg (85), have been packaging and selling crystalline iodine for 30 years, touting it as a drinking water disinfectant for hikers and backpackers.
They call it "Polar Pure".
The authorities beg to differ, having heard a rumor someone passed on that this stuff might possibly be used by methamphetamine lab operators, somehow or other, every now and then. To maybe do some kind of stuff.
That was good enough.
Although Wallace and Ottenberg (a chemist by trade) have repeatedly eluded authorities by the fiendishly devious ruse of staying home and minding their own business (which is manufacturing Polar Pure), the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency finally caught up with them last week, after looking up Wallace's name in the phone book and driving over to his house.
Once there the Feds were at first flummoxed by Wallace's security system -- his dog Buddy asleep on the front porch. But, faithful to their oath to "Look Real Busy!", the Feds eventually overcame their fear and sidled around to the garage where they nabbed Wallace, busily filling orders for his customers.
Wallace, a Stanford University-educated engineer, greeted the Men in Blue with a cheery "This old couple, barely surviving old farts, and we're supposed to be meth dealers? This is just plain stupid," before he was stuffed into a gunny sack and beaten with rubber hoses to relieve boredom for the agents, who also needed to work up an appetite for their mid-morning donut break.
DEA spokeswoman Bethany-Anne Cramphole said later, primarily through hand gestures and grimaces in addition to a few rudimentary grunts, that if Mr. Wallace hadn't wanted to get hurt then he shouldn't have been standing around looking old.
Special Agent Tracy Dickhead, a Narcotics Special Task Force Commandante-Enforcer, said he was currently on the lookout for "Beavis and Butt-Head" types, the kind of people who might just go off into the mountains and do unsupervised things out there.
"Cops are the most humorless knotheads on the planet," Wallace said, after which they surrounded him and pulled out all his nose hairs to prove it wasn't so.
After taking out Wallace and Ottenberg, the DEA agents swarmed the Gentle Acres Home for the Aged, and confiscated anything that looked suspicious.
Since they didn't understand what was going on out there, they took everything.
Federal agents say 88-year-old Saratoga man's invention is being used by meth labs.