The Big Telephone

Chapter One

The Big Telephone

(A Dragnet Fan Fiction Story)

By: Kristi N. Zanker

Disclaimer: All publicly recognized characters, settings, etc. are the property of Mark VII Limited and Universal. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. I, in no way am associated with the owners, creators, or producers of Dragnet. No copyright infringement is intended.

WARNING: This chapter contains some strong language, and adult themes.

Chapter One

While driving home from the Los Angeles International Airport, Sergeant Joe Friday decided to drive down Collis Avenue. As he neared house number 4656—a small yellow early American ranch with white shutters—a thousand memories came flooding back. He had grown up in that house and helped his mother take care of it until 1952. He could visualize the inside, where the large console radio sat in the living room, the icebox and later refrigerator in the kitchen, the phone in the hall on the small table, or the wringer washing machine out on the service porch. For a second he wondered if the radio was still there. Of course it wouldn't be! After all, this was Sunday, April 9, 1967 and who used console radios and wringer washing machines anymore? And some people today had more than three telephones in the house! He felt a lump in his throat. No, now was not the time to get emotional. Not on some stranger's lawn—which also used to belong to my mother and me, he thought.

A week ago, his mother had passed away. She was almost 75, but it still hurt. Joe remembered that every time he came home, whether it was three in the afternoon or three in the morning, his mother would wake up and fix him something to eat. She always told him he never got enough to eat. He didn't mind living with her for all those years, even though his detective partners would constantly tease him about settling down and getting married.

Ever since he joined the LAPD during the spring of 1938, his mother always worried about him. Joe's father had passed away when he was young and didn't remember him. So, he felt it was his responsibility to take care of his mother; after all, she raised him during the poverty-stricken 1920s, for them anyway, and Great Depression. When Pearl Harbor was bombed three-and-a-half years after Joe joined the force, Uncle Sam decided to give him a deferment because he was the sole provider in the family. Being the patriotic man that he was, along with thousands of others, Joe enlisted in one of the branches of military service—the United States Army.

From 1942 to 1945, Joe trained and then fought across North Africa and Europe in large battles such as the invasion of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge and many smaller battles that he and his buddies would only remember. Everyone knew that Hitler and his regime had to be conquered and finally in early May, 1945, the Germans surrendered. All throughout this time, when he could, Joe sent the majority of his allotment checks home to his mother. She needed it more than he did, he always believed.

When Joe returned home, he resumed his position with the LAPD, feeling lucky to have a job at all, where so many veterans around him had trouble finding work and even housing. This is why he lived with his mother at that time. He felt fortunate as many others lived in garages, attics, a spare room, or small trailer. Apartments were scarce and it would be a few years before new neighborhoods sprang up. Soon, things returned to as they were, or they seemed to as the post-war months went by. The war had been an interruption for young men like him, but that soon drifted into the past. Everyone wanted to move on with their lives. Sometimes, it was as if he had never left at all—almost. He had his own troubles after the war that few people knew about, but these days, his experiences "over there" were far behind him.