Flip-Flops, Finals, and Federal Agents

It was 6 am, May 4th, 1971, at the University of Iowa Women’s Dormitory. I was sound asleep. I had stayed up late to cram for my last final exam and pack my boyfriend Mike’s car. We planned to leave right after the exam. It was exactly a year after the National Guard killed four students protesting nonviolently against the Vietnam War at Kent State. Students for a Democratic Society maintained a strong presence in Iowa.

The phone rang in my dorm room. Groggily, I answered it.

“Is this Miss Scruggs?”

“Yes.”

“This is special agent blank from the US Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Can you come down to the lobby, please?”

“Sure,” I said, and hung up and went back to sleep. At that time, dorm room phone numbers were in the city phone book, and we were always getting prank phone calls.

Some minutes later, another call. “Miss Scruggs, are you coming down?” This sounded serious.

I pulled on navy-blue short shorts, a red sleeveless tank top and flip flops, and went downstairs.

I was 19 years old, sleepy and confused. When I got down to the lobby, there were six large men standing there. Two each from the ATF, the FBI, and the Sheriff’s department.

“Miss Scruggs, do you own a suitcase?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know where it is?”

“It’s in my boyfriend’s car with the rest of my stuff. We’re leaving town today. At least that’s where it was the last time I saw it,” I said, searching their faces.

“Miss Scruggs, is this the luggage tag from your suitcase?” They showed me the tag, wrapped in plastic.

“Yes,” I answered, clearly confused.

“What’s in the suitcase?”

“My clothes.” My dirty clothes, I thought, guiltily. I WAS 19…

“Where is your boyfriend’s car?”

“Outside the house where he’s staying.”

“Did you go out after it was packed?”

“No, I was studying.”

“Miss Scruggs, your suitcase was found on the steps of the courthouse this morning.”

I wondered why they didn’t just open it if they were so concerned. Then it hit me. “You think there’s a bomb in my suitcase!”

“That’s what we’re here to find out. We need to talk to your boyfriend.”

I don’t remember the ride to Mike’s place, a known “drug house.” When we got there, someone let us in and as we climbed the stairs to his room, toilets started flushing.

Mike hadn’t had much sleep, either, but I woke him up, along with his 17-year-old nephew, Roy. The sheriffs watched from the door. Mike pulled on his jeans, probably not washed for weeks, and pulled on a tee shirt over his long hair.

We walked out to the car. “Is this your car?” an officer asked Mike.

“Yes.”

“Did you pack it?”

“We all did,” Mike answered, motioning toward Roy and me.

“Is anything missing from inside?”

Mike looked through the window. “Not that I can see.”

We’d tossed a folded rug over the suitcase, so it wasn’t immediately apparent that anything was missing.

“Check again.”

Mike took a long look at the backseat. “Marianne’s suitcase is missing.”

“Mr. Darring, did you go out at all last night?”

“I came out to look at Mars passing Jupiter,” he responded. (Or something like that, I can’t remember.)

“Was the car locked?”

“I believe so.”

“You all need to come down to the station with us for questioning if you don’t mind.”

I’m still in my short shorts and flip flops. The three of us piled into the cop car.

As we walk into the sheriff’s station, I see a large peace sign on the wall with the words “Track of the American Chicken” written on it. Of course, I thought.

The men led me out to the courthouse to see my suitcase. They had moved it to the lawn and surrounded it by a circle of sandbags several feet high.

“I could just open it. Though I suppose whoever took it might’ve actually put a bomb in it.” How absurd, I thought.

They took me back inside and sat us in a row on cold metal chairs. I remember that because I was wearing those short shorts. Then they called us in one by one for questioning.

The only question I remember was, “Does your boyfriend smoke marijuana?”

“Oh, no, officer.”

They asked Roy the same question and got the same answer.

They asked Mike who said, “Of course I do.”

Meanwhile, they searched Mike’s room back at the house, without a warrant. Mike later admitted he had 50 hits of acid in his back pocket.

We sat in the hall for a very long time. So much for my final exam. We were told we were waiting for the army demolition team to come in from Illinois. Seriously?

They asked us if we had ever been arrested. Mike stated he had.

“November 1969, in Mobile,” an officer confirmed, glancing at a clipboard.

“I accidentally walked out of a drugstore with a pen,” Mike asserted.

I had never heard this story, but I knew he had been in jail with hundreds of others for short periods in D.C. for protesting the war, including in the past month. At this point, I was getting worried.

After the questioning, while we sat waiting for the US Army guys, I whispered to Mike, “Did you do this? Because it’s kind of funny, I won’t be mad.” He swore he didn’t.

I sat there next to Mike. What did I really know about him? He was a polymath and a prolific reader and writer. He could, as my great uncle Milton would’ve said “talk the hind end off a donkey.” He always maintained above a 4.0 average while double majoring in history, philosophy, math, and architecture. Every spring quarter he left college to drive around the country protesting the war, returning in the fall with his grades still intact.

It was just as well that he went on the road every spring as he was intense and exhausting. Like so many others, he had been influenced by Alan Ginsburg, Ferlinghetti, Cassidy and the rest of the beats as well as Nietzsche, Herman Hesse and others. Having been raised in a large Catholic family and gone to Jesuit boarding school, he had a bit of a savior complex. I, on the other hand, was just trying to get a degree in something I could use to “fall back on” as my father put it.

Eventually, two fully camo-clothed Illinois army guys walked in, carrying my shot-up, open suitcase. They wondered aloud if we could be cited for littering. Apparently, they had placed a sawed-off shotgun inside the sandbags, tied a string to the trigger, stepped back, and pulled it. I wondered why they needed to bring in troops all the way from Illinois for such a basic operation. I found myself worrying they’d seen my dirty underwear. At that point, absurd felt almost understated.

I was able to take my exam the next day. Before we could leave town, the sheriff called to ask if I could come in to answer some questions. Mike wanted to just leave, but I was curious.

The sheriff asked a few questions he already knew the answers to. It seemed he had checked up on me, even called my grandmother. “Your Grandma sends her love.” He smiled at me in a fatherly way. It raised my hackles. He implied the investigation had turned up a suspect, someone from nearby Cedar Rapids known to associate with Mike. I didn’t believe it.

“We dusted the car for fingerprints,” he said, trying to convince me.

Funny, they never took ours, I thought.

“You will have to testify against him. It was grand larceny, after all.”

I told him I wouldn’t do it. We got into an impassioned discussion, at least on my end. I argued against the war and defended Mike and other conscientious objectors. He continued his father-knows-best condemnation of “beatniks” and their anti-American activities. I walked out. An hour later, Mike and I were out of Iowa City.

I’ve never known who pulled the prank, but 50 years later I realized I asked Mike the wrong question. I should’ve asked if he knew the guy who took the suitcase. Now I suspect it was a stoned plan he cooked up with someone he knew.

To no one’s surprise, Mike and I eventually broke up. I became a feminist and a midwife and moved to England. After he finally gave up drugs, he went to work on oil rigs off the Gulf Coast, then worked in petroleum company labs. He invented a few patentable something or others used in that field and made a fair amount of money, I hear.

I have never been back to Iowa City.