Bumming around central Florida, a phone number in Belize, my wild landlord and a ratty Yamaha 360 he used to rob a local bank

Crab Trap Tommy was related to Jimmy. Somehow, he had the job of repainting Jay’s boat in the Bradenton Marina, and I was the unskilled labor doing most of the sanding and prepping. Jay didn’t seem to work, but was heavily involved in the activity that makes you stay up all night, sleep most of the day and sniff a lot. It was actually a good thing as he rarely came on deck to bother us, which was surprising with all the noise we were making. But I digress.

The work was dirty and laborious, but there on the dock sat the reward for my day of toil- a rather ratty Yamaha XS360 four stroke parallel twin. Once the day was over, I would have the pleasure of riding it across town to the duplex where I was staying, in what could be described as a slightly dodgy part of town. My Landlord Jimmy owned the bike, and a Triumph chopper, which is actually how we met, although thinking about it his sister Debbie was the reason we met. I guess she thought we’d get along because we were both into motorcycles. Debbie was actually married to Crazy Laughing Dave Wainright, who was Jimmy’s best friend, and he had a Honda 550 chopper so we all got along swimmingly. Laughing Dave also had a fairly stock 1973 CB 550 Honda at their home on the other coast in Melbourne, Florida that I bought a year later and rode to Alaska, but that too is another story.

A 1976 Yamaha XS360, not unlike the bike I bombed around west central Florida on during those years. This one is in much better shape, of course. Photo by Bike-urious.

Jimmy’s full-time profession was drug dealing, Crazy Laughing Dave seemed to be always visiting Jimmy and drinking heavily, so life at the duplex was never dull. I quickly transitioned from casual boat work to full time roofing work, and with my eye still on world travel ahead, was more interested in going to bed early and saving my money than partying with Jimmy and his crew; but it didn’t stop me from having a few mad evenings out. There weren’t too many Englishmen around the dive bars of Bradenton, Florida in 1984, and it’s probably a good idea I don’t mention how much trouble I almost got us in when we went to a Country & Western bar with my big mouth. Or the night I was chatting up some very attractive bird at a party for the newly elected Sheriff Charlie Wells. Thankfully, Jimmy spotted a potential small problem when he dragged me out of the tent and informed me that the Ms very interested in the Englishman in corduroy trousers and dress shoes was actually the Sheriff’s wife. Ooops.

So apart from a random assortment of strange people coming by to score weed, some special activity nights out at the pub (which for some reason didn’t shut till 2.p.m.), I mostly went to work, made dinner for us in the evening and saved my money. And then one night Jimmy told me his master plan. He intended to rob a local bank across the river in Palmetto. There was an inside connection, and a very large sum of cash in the bank on the day the county workers cashed their pay checks. Thursdays, if my memory serves me correctly. He decided the Yamaha 360 would make a great tool for his plan, and that I would drive the getaway van.

Jimmy’s plan was to pull up to the drive through, tell the girl inside (who was in on the robbery) that he had a bomb in the deposit tube so don’t hit the alarm, and that she should bring out all the money. This would then go in the top box, he would roar off to the designated spot where I would be waiting with the van doors open, ramp in place, and voila. We’d be off down the road with just over $60,000.

It was a fun bike, when it ran. Photo by Bike-urious.

Now as a roofing worker making $5 per hour, I have to say it all seemed quite attractive. We went over to the bank, I made a map of the roads, traffic lights, routes and places to put the van, and in the evenings after work started doing some repairs and servicing on the Yamaha, which had not been running too well. Jimmy promised after the robbery we would jump in his truck, head for Mexico and drive south, not stopping until we got to Rio De Janeiro. Slowly the plans came together and as the day of reckoning approached, I found myself driving back from Palmetto arguing with Jimmy about some of the details.

I might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but a small 30-watt light bulb came on later that night. How could we be arguing about how to rob a bank when neither of us had any experience? And then there was the incident where his truck conked out in front of the jailhouse a day later with pounds of pot on the seat that I had to quickly jam in the center storage area when a friendly policeman poked his nose in to see if everything was okay, as we were holding up traffic. Phew!

Bombing around north Georgia with my friend Rob, on a much more modern Yamaha- 2024 MT-07.

So I made a corporate decision to leave the country as fast as possible and head south. I’m smart like that. I had a phone number of a guy Jimmy’s dad knew on the Guatemalan border in Belize with a mahogany farm, and figured I’d head there looking for work. Then I could overland for Rio when I had some more cash saved up. I’d saved around $600 by then, which was plenty then for an overland trip to Brazil. Jimmy dropped me at the airport, I took a puddle jumper to Miami, flew to Belize City and boarded an old American school bus for Punta Gorda in the southern jungle. Of course, the guy wasn’t there, and I ended up in Nicaragua a month later dealing money on the black market during the Sandinista/Contra war, after some interesting events in Guatemala and El Salvador, but that too is a story for another day.

Jimmy robbed the bank a couple of days after I left and got away with just over $65,000. Unfortunately, he asked Crazy Laughing Dave to drive the getaway van and somehow, Dave showed up in a convertible forcing Jimmy to ditch the bike in the mangroves. Seven months later, after all the money was gone, he got caught when his girlfriend turned him in. Also, the Yamaha had been found and was about to lead the investigation back to him anyway. Jimmy ended up doing a year in a minimum-security prison in Raeford, Florida, across the road from Ted Bundy, and as I was riding to Alaska on Crazy Laughing Dave’s Honda 550 by this time, I stopped in to say hey. Jimmy got out and, apart from a little faux pas with some cocaine, never got in trouble with the law again. He married, now has two adult boys, a handful of grandkids and lives quietly in retirement now, interestingly still somewhere in Palmetto, Florida.

Neale

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