1970 Roadrunner - again

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It's easy to skip details when a person conveys a story to others. I get immersed in the memories of those days gone by. I can still feel the cool night air, see the broken yellow dividing lines of the highway move by so fast that they seem like one solid line, hear the pitch of the engine as I rocketed down the road, and feel the panic as I contemplated what to do.

I was still a teenager. I lived with my folks where I helped out on the family farm in addition to working at a factory 25 miles away. My family was conservative and although I wasn't a trouble maker, I was the most outlandish of my parent's 5 children. - The bad seed. I loved my folks dearly. They were the type of people (though they're gone now) that I looked up to. But the hotrod bug had bitten me and I was hooked.

So, faced with the situation I had gotten myself into I had to make a decision. Either continue ahead and hope for the best or give it up. I decided to pull over.

It was almost as if I was possessed by someone else. I wasn't acting as I normally would have. This wasn't me. But it was.

I had turned off the ignition before they'd arrived. In the silence my mind seemed to go blank. I just sat there in the dark and waited.

It took almost two minutes for the cops to arrive. As the first car pulled up behind me, the second turned around and headed back to Seward. I watched them through the corner of my eye in the rear view mirror as I stared at the gauges. - The red light from the car behind piercing the darkness made everything seem surreal. Time to pay the piper.

A minute or so went by before the officer walked up to my door. My window was still rolled up so he knocked on the glass with his flashlight. I didn't respond. A few seconds later he knocked again. Slowly I turned my head and faced him. He motioned with his hand for me to roll down the window. I did. - And as calmly as I could, I said "Yes?" in a questioning tone. My voice didn't waiver. The panic I was feeling stayed hidden.

I recognized the police officer. He was a new hire. It was his first week on the force. His name was Henry. What made him stand out was his stature. He was only five foot tall. He compensated for his height by wearing a 10 gallon cowboy hat. Although he must have thought it made him look taller, it actually had the opposite effect.

The first words out of his mouth were " Boy, You in a heap of trouble." I'm not making that up. He really said it. Anyone familiar with the old 70s Dodge commercials will recognize that line. Next he said, " You better follow me back to the station." and walked back to his car.

I waited for him to turn around but instead, he returned to my car and said, "On second thought, I'd better follow YOU back to the station."
 
I know I said it before, but I really wasn't acting as I normally would have. As the officer walked back to his car I fired up the Roadrunner and spun it back around facing South towards Seward. Without lighting up the tires, I accelerated as fast as I could up to the speed limit. In my rear view, I could see the officer running as fast as he could to get back in his car.

I know my Roadrunner wasn't the fastest car around, but it was quick. As I watched the patrol car struggle to catch up I thought that he must have been feeling a little panicked himself.

It was about a ten minute drive back to Seward. I don't remember what I was thinking about on the way back. But I wasn't feeling like myself. I was feeling rebellious. As I got closer to the police station I could see that it was now surrounded by a combination of state patrol, sheriff, deputy sheriff, and Seward P.D. cars. They weren't there earlier. The two street side parking stalls were still open, but so was the stall reserved for the car behind me. I took it. (this behavior was just so NOT ME)

After parking on the street, Henry escorted me into the station. It was standing room only. I never counted how many law enforcement guys there were there, but I remember thinking that I didn't know they had that many. They all stared at me as I walked through the door. You'd have thought that I was Dillinger or Bonnie & Clyde. I was ushered back to a small room behind the front entrance.

Everything still had that surrealistic feeling about it. The room had one hard wooden chair and one small hard wood table. I was told to sit down. On the table was a single bulb lamp with a flexible neck on it. The officer clicked it on and directed the light towards my face. It felt like it must have been a heat light bulb. This room was the stereotypical interrogation room I had seen in all the movies. It was real. - And I was in it.

 
The officer turned and left, closing the door behind him. I probably could have redirected the lamp away from my face, but I just sat there. I was numb. I could hear a lot of voices beyond the door but I couldn't make out what they were saying. I didn't even try to decipher what was being said.

I think I may have lost all concept of time. I don't know how long I sat before the door finally opened again. I didn't recognize the two officers that came in. The one that spoke seemed like he was in charge. He began to rattle off a long list of offenses that they could write me up for. Disturbing the peace. Exhibition acceleration. Speeding. Reckless driving. Willful reckless driving. Flight to avoid arrest. I think there were others, but those are the ones I remember. He guaranteed me that they could take my license right now.

But then he said something that caught me totally by surprise. He said he was going to cut me a break. He listed off the offenses they could nail me for again and said they were going to let me go. - On one condition. All I had to do was to tell them how fast I was going.

I didn't think I had heard him correctly. It didn't soak in. I must have looked confused when I asked "What?" Any belligerence in my tone was gone. - Replaced by the tone of the confused. I asked him again. "What?"

He repeated himself. "I said we will let you go if you tell us how fast you were going."

I tried not to show it but a certain feeling of giddiness was creeping in. Along with it, so did a bit of my attitude. I looked at him and said I didn't know.

He repeated again that they would let me go if I told him.

I stood my ground and said that I didn't know. I told him that I was pretty sure that I was speeding, but that I didn't know how fast.

The other officer in the room became agitated. He blurted out, "Tell us! We already said we'd let you go!"

I shrugged my shoulders and repeated that I was pretty sure that I'd been speeding but couldn't say how fast.

"Well how fast do you think you were going?!!!" shouted that second officer.

I said again that I didn't know but I might have been going over 70 mph.

That's when he lost it. He threw something on the ground, pointed his finger at me and yelled "Our radar gun here only reads up to 125 mph! When we pointed it at you all we got were two lines across the screen! How fast were you going?!!"

When I repeated again that I didn't know, he stormed out of the room. I actually wasn't lying. I didn't know how fast I was going. The speedometer needle was pointing down at the 40 some thousand miles on my odometer. I knew it was fast.

Over the course of the next half hour or so, a number of other officers entered the room with the same question. Eventually they gave up and told me I could go. As I got up to leave I half-expected everything to change. Walking past the gauntlet of law enforcement, no one said a word. I walked out, got into my car, and went home.

The drive home was quiet. I could see that no matter what speed I drove, a set of headlights behind me maintained about a half mile distance.

I was so thankful for surviving the incident unscathed that I drove extra cautiously afterwards. I obeyed all the traffic laws. But I became accustomed to getting pulled over once or twice a week thereafter when in Seward county. Usually it was with a written warning and sometimes I was written bogus tickets. My glove box overflowed.
 
I still think that those times were much more innocent. When we got into trouble it wasn't because we were doing anything to hurt anyone else, we were usually just raising hell. - Sort of like in the old west movies when they'd show the cattle herders coming into town shooting their guns up in the air. The trouble was that some folks thought we were the outlaw gang coming to pillage the townsfolk.
 
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