“I said, ‘What the hell. I can do this easy, standing on my head,” Cargile said from his Walnut Hills home.
Cargile is no rabble-rouser. Aside from a few driving tickets, he has a spotless criminal record. He had a long career, spending most of it teaching at Taft and Withrow high schools He goes to bed at 8:30 every night to get up early to run.
He drove his pickup truck through Lincoln Heights when he was pulled over for improper brake lights. Cargile put those lights on his truck a decade before and never had any complaints about them, he said.
“They’d been on there 10 years and I been all over the country with it,” Cargile said of his truck. “I knew what it was. It was Lincoln Heights.”
When he showed up in court Jan. 9, he saw lots of those accused giving what he thought were excuses aimed at getting out of trouble. He didn’t want to be like them. He was frustrated and wanted to make a point, even if it cost his freedom.
“When they called me up, I said ‘I plead absolutely guilty as charged,’ ” Cargile said. “The courtroom erupted in laughter.”
He was fined $160 plus $105 in court costs. When Cargile objected, court costs were waived. He still wasn’t happy. He was told to pay up or go to jail for three days.
“I wasn’t planning on going to jail,” Cargile said. “When the opportunity came, I just took it. I was upset about the money. I told them I’d take the three days.”
He did so, to protest how ridiculous he thought the infraction and fine were.
“I never been in jail. I been in the Marine Corps in the jungle (in the Philippines) and Marine Corps boot camp. I wasn’t worried about jail,” Cargile said. “If you come out of the Marine Corps boot camp, everything else in life is downhill.”
Lincoln Heights contracted with Butler County to jail its prisoners. When Cargile got there to serve his sentence, there only was room left in the maximum security cells.
“A cell the size of a shoebox. The jailbird in there with me, he liked to die” it was so small, Cargile said.
He spent his jail time by jogging around the pod of cells and the jail’s basketball court. To run around the court, he had to get permission of what he believed were white supremacists playing hoops.
“The skinheads called me ‘Big Man.’ They said ‘Big Man, do what you do.’ It was never a problem,” Cargile said.
Jail, in fact, never was a problem for Cargile. He ate three meals each day – “not the best but they certainly were not the worst,” he said – had a clean cot and gave and was given respect by fellow inmates.
His time in jail, Cargile believes was so easy that he now better understands why so many jails are full: It’s too easy.
“It was a picnic. An unadulterated picnic,” Cargile said, recommending that more people reject paying fines and spend a few days behind bars.
He didn’t mind giving up his freedom, perhaps, he suggested, because of his age.
“Being free, what was I going to do? Every day, I get up, run and then get on the computer,” Cargile said. “It’s just a misdemeanor. It doesn’t bother me at all. I’m 70 years old. What am I going to do?”
He didn’t lose his freedom, he insists. He gained an insight into the legal and jail systems and got to make his point. And he had fun.
“Oh yes, it was worth it. Oh yes. I had a good time,” he said.