Sure wish I had a guitar so I could tell you this story properly. It’s a story of young love, of drunkenness and a strong craving for tobacco. It’s a story of recklessness, thievery and inventing new ways to get in trouble with the law.

Mostly it’s a story of what I like to call boneheadery. And stories of boneheadery above all demand to be told with the accompaniment of twangy music.

But let me get started without a rhythm section.

The story began Saturday night when a lawman was called to a Mechanic Falls home where our drunken couple was annoying the hell out of the young lady’s momma.

“Everybody was intoxicated,” said the honorable gendarme, Kevin Nichols of Mechanic Falls PD. “The girl and her boyfriend were falling-down drunk. They were all over themselves. The mother really wanted them out of there.”

Here, I would like to introduce keen finger-picking to imply inebriation that comes out of a jug.

So the stumbling couple was ushered out of the home by the lawman at the end of his shift. There wasn’t much to them: clothes on their backs, fumes on their breath that could start a fire and a small stash of the tobacco weed which you will see they coveted mightily.

“They had a half a cigarette to split between them,” Nichols said, “but no lighter.”

Oliver Twit and his favorite gal were given a ride downtown, which in Mechanic Falls means around the block and just beyond the yarn barn.

Nichols began making phone calls, looking for friends or relatives of the happy couple to come and give them a lift back to their home in Bath. But wouldn’t you know it? Whatever friends they had suddenly had other commitments and could not be called upon to help.

“Love to help, officer. But at this very moment, I am fastening my right foot to the floorboards with a nail gun.”

So Nichols, well beyond the end of his shift now, jotted down a few more long shot names and handed them to an incoming officer. One suspects that it might have been tempting for him to simply send the reeling couple down the road to find their own way back to their friendless community.

“I couldn’t do that,” he said. “They were definitely a danger to themselves.”

Turns out that might be an understatement, as I would emphasize here with some jaunty finger-picking reminiscent of the Loony Toons theme.

Nichols went to the parking lot to fetch a smoke and ponder this imbroglio further.

“So, I get in my car and I reach for my smokes. My cigarettes and lighter are gone. I had a hunch who took them.”

Nearby, the hapless orphans were milling about in the parking lot, quite at ease and smoking happily. Perhaps Dueling Banjos here might do justice to this brazen crime so quickly discovered.

“I went over and he was smoking one of my cigarettes. He had the lighter and his girlfriend had the pack in her pocket,” Nichols said.

No fingerprint kit, no magnifying glass required for the resolution of this caper. When confronted, the meandering couple swiftly admitted the deed.

“He said, ‘dude. I’m sorry. We just really, really needed a smoke.'”

And so where they started their evening gleefully drunk and unencumbered by criminal charges, they ended it by being booked at the Mechanic Falls PD on charges of vehicle burglary and theft.

I like to picture Nichols chasing the culprits around the parking lot, in crazy circles and in super fast motion, and slapping at them with his cap. Cue the Benny Hill theme.

But since I’m told it didn’t happen that way, I’ll end this sad tale by pointing out that conditions of their bail prohibit the tobacco-craving couple from having further contact with each other. So by the shank of the evening, each was drunk, alone, 40-miles from home and still tobacco-free, save for the few puffs they had purloined from the officer.

A sorry story indeed about wandering love and a self-defeating addiction to the weed. But lest you get it in your head that this couple was of the teen variety, and therefore excused of their indiscretions by virtue of the fact that this is what teenagers do, let me tell you: our friends Bonehead and Clod are 27 and 25-years-old, respectively, plenty old enough to know that there are safer ways of obtaining cigarettes than by lifting them from a man with a badge.

And so ends the tale. I’m sad to bring it to close because moronic criminals always make me chortle. I console myself with the fact that this adventurous couple will likely be back with new tales of lazy crime and swift punishment. And in preparation of that, I will procure a guitar and even learn how to play the harmonica.