I work at a church (I would name it but Andrew thinks someone would stalk me) off Commercial Street. On Wednesday of last week, I went to run an errand and found I could not drive down Commercial Street because there were a bunch of cop cars and they were caution-taping-off the entire Walgreens entrance and Phoenix Inn Suites entrance. I sort of figured someone had been murdered in the hotel and had escaped (because that's what I'm used to in Salem--[our neighbor shot himself and died a few months ago...there was a shooting 5 houses down from us last month...inbd]).
Anyway, when I came back to the church, it was the same story, but now, they weren't even letting people anywhere near that part of Commercial -- they were detouring them to Sunnyside. On my next errand, it was the same story, but this time I saw the Salem Police Bomb Squad (which I didn't even know we had) and I realized that all the hoopla was about a potential bomb.
To be honest, I had sort of thought this already because I had been watching a lot of 24 recently and they deal with bombs all the time, so I figured this probably happens in real life too. What was most interesting is that I'm pretty sure the Bomb squad mobile is just a horse trailer painted white with the words "Salem Bomb Squad" on it, because that is seriously what it looked like. I cannot find an official picture of one but I render it to this:
SOO anyway, when I finally left the church to go home, everything was cleared out and no one had died and I hadn't been blown up either. I kept trying to find out on the internet what had happened...and then I found it.
Apparently, someone had found an "abandoned" duffle bag in the bushes between Walgreens and the hotel and decided to call the police. Yes, they called the police instead of just opening the duffle bag to see what was in there (money?). And of course, somewhere along the way, someone decided it was a bomb. So they obviously brought out their bomb robot, which apparently blows up bombs (what?) so they blew up the duffle bag.
BOMB ROBOT:
Note: This bomb robot would get completely
handled by ASIMO:
You know what was in the duffle bag?
Hot dogs.
Hot dogs.
They blew up a bag of hot dogs.
Where is Jack Bauer?
That's what you missed.
(Moral of the story: If you find an abandoned duffle bag by a Walgreens, not on a train station, check what's in it before you call the police).
