{"id":1125,"date":"2006-06-05T10:16:13","date_gmt":"2006-06-05T18:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2006\/06\/hes_a_wild_and_crazy_guy.html"},"modified":"2008-01-25T11:13:35","modified_gmt":"2008-01-25T16:13:35","slug":"hes_a_wild_and","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/06\/hes_a_wild_and.html","title":{"rendered":"He&#8217;s A Wild And Crazy Guy!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Long Island man who was late for his . . . ah, just let the Post pick up <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nypost.com\/news\/regionalnews\/64728.htm\">this wild and crazy tale<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>[Roman Walkowiak&#8217;s] American adventure began Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n<p>He was scheduled to take his citizenship test at 8 a.m. at the Brooklyn federal courthouse.<\/p>\n<p>After circling the block for more than an hour, he parked illegally on the plaza behind Borough Hall, figuring he&#8217;d rather chance the ticket than miss his appointment.<\/p>\n<p>After walking out of the courthouse proudly holding his citizenship certificate, Walkowiak was greeted with a rare gift from the NYPD: a ticketless car.<\/p>\n<p>But then things began to go wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of backing onto Court Street the way he&#8217;d come, Walkowiak, for whatever reason, decided to drive through the plaza, directly to Adams Street.<\/p>\n<p>Frightened passers-by ran screaming as the red Volkswagen made its way through the crowd.<\/p>\n<p>In the confusion, Walkowiak somehow missed the fact that he was headed straight for a set of about seven stairs.<\/p>\n<p>When his car suddenly lurched down the first step, he just kept going. Until his car bottomed out and refused to budge.<\/p>\n<p>Exhibiting the never-say-die American spirit, he didn&#8217;t give up. As shocked onlookers watched, Walkowiak flipped his car into reverse and tried to back up the steps.<\/p>\n<p>The maneuver only managed to wedge the car more firmly into place.<\/p>\n<p>Nearby court officers quickly pulled Walkowiak from his car and demanded to know if he was drunk.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No, but I&#8217;m on my way to get drunk because I just became a U.S. citizen!&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>The officers slapped a pair of handcuffs on Walkowiak, a divorced father of a son, and dragged him right back to the courthouse.<\/p>\n<p>The officers called cops, who charged him on the spot with disorderly conduct, issued a desk appearance ticket with a $300 fine, and let him go.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I was very happy to become a citizen,&#8221; he said. &#8220;And then all sorts of crazy stuff happened.&#8221;<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Long Island man who was late for his . . . ah, just let the Post pick up this wild and crazy tale: [Roman Walkowiak&#8217;s] American adventure began Wednesday morning. He was scheduled to take his citizenship test at 8 a.m. at the Brooklyn federal courthouse. After circling the block for more than an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brooklyn","category-thats_a_hoot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}