As law enforcement officers go, his pistol went off half-cocked. When he was a kid the others laughed and made fun of him. As an adult, they did no better. He worked in a town of five hundred inhabitants, if one counted those in the cemetery. The teenagers called him Barney Fife, not affectionately. Truthfully, the deputy with the same name from the Andy Griffith Show was more adept at solving crimes than him.

In a small town, when all else fails to amuse bored youths, it is always fun to annoy the cop; and especially so when the officer is full of himself and the importance of his job. Such was the case when this tale occurred.

One of the area’s more inventive young men and his buddy decided to pull a prank on the pompous policeman. They stopped by the local grocery store and then found a beer bottle lying by the side of the road. They filled the beer bottle with the substance they had bought and then resumed their aimless drives about town. In due course, the area’s lawman saw the driver of the car tip a beer bottle to his mouth. Quickly, the rowdy youths were pulled over, a full investigation was in order. Duty bound and joyous of his potential arrest of transgressors, the patrolman approached the car.

"What do you have in that beer bottle, boy," the officer questioned with an air of superiority while reaching in to grab it from between the driver’s legs. Without further questions and sure of his first impression, he put the bottle to his nose and took a good long sniff. The next thing he remembered was clearing his head and picking himself off the ground to a steady chorus of unbridled laughter from those in the car.