I Stopped The Car!

      Really!/Working Class Corner

Local Info.     by Russell Scott Day

       A couple of months ago I got a ticket for running a stop sign, though really I got a ticket for a bad stop, because when I saw the cop car I hit the brakes harder and he pulled me and said I had not stopped within the prescribed distance from the stop line.

       I may even have hit the brakes twice in this instance, once for a shift stop of not much, and the other after seeing the lurking police cruiser.

      Even the best of us end up playing a game of cat and mouse now and then.   The cat is more likely to win of course, but there are more mice.

      Our cat Alister catches and eats a good number of rabbits.   Seems like he and the rest of the cats decided they wanted a pet rabbit, and let one live in the house for 2 months.

      Some of the famous mobsters of New York tabloids are equavalent pet criminals of our society like the criminal rabbit, pet of my cats, who forced me to rearrange the house so much that I haven’t yet put it back into order.

     Damn Rabbit!

     So anyway I have a Cat and Mouse event, and decided to see if I could win, or at least come out even since I did stop, and I was pretty close to the line, which is not actually drawn on the road.

      The fine and court costs comes to 160.00 dollars, and I had 200.00 in my account.

      Pulling into the parking lot for the courthouse the engine made noises that I knew from experience were belts coming off of the engine.   Last time I heard this sort of sound I ended up driving for about a month with no power steering.

      This strengthed my upper body and my wife commented favorably, but I did miss power steering on the car, and eventually had it repaired.

      The line for traffic court was very long already at 8:40 there in historic Hillsbourgh North Carolina, but it moved all right and I figure I would have gotten to work by 10:30 if I hadn’t had to have the car towed.

      Having the car towed cost me 127.00 since my Triple A membership had expired in August and I had to reup and get a penalty, which was Plus would not be in effect for 3 or four days and instead of 100 free membership tow miles, I had three and it was three dollars a mile after that.

      For some reason I had hit my trip meter a couple of block from the house on the way to the courthouse and therefore knew that it as 13 miles I had driven from then and that my mechanic as at most 3 miles from my house.

      It was 14 miles and I ended up giving him all my cash, which was 29 dollars.

      If I had just paid the fine, I would have not had the money to get the car to the mechanic, so it is a good thing that I decided to gamble on going to court and pleaded not guilty and got a court date and also have the option of doing a driving course on the internet, that will reduce the charge on its face.

       That costs 60 dollars.   Still I figure that is a managable chunk and the course takes about a half an hour, and a little brush up might not hurt.

       It used to be fun to drive when I was a teenager and it was mom or dads car, and even later on into my thirties, but since then I really don’t like it much and look at it as real work, and most of the time I drive I get paid to do it anymore.

      Between cops and criminals crazy drivers and weather, driving has little charm for me anymore.

       I remember when I drove like a bat out of hell scaring people either in the car I was driving, or on the road we shared.

      Now that was fun!

      I learned to drive from Nascar licensed drivers who were my Scoutmasters in the Elon College Troop 52.

      In the Boy Scouts I learned to drive and shoot, and tie knots and enjoy being cold and wet.

      It’s actually good training for being homeless, but I have wondered if my life would not have been more financially secure if I had not accepted that there were miseries to be endured and enjoyed same as pleasures.

      It has something to do with being honorable by habit that I like to think of as ingrained that I wonder about as being lost when organizations like the Boy Scouts are not Cool enough for a resume`.

      So anyway I learned a few things today.

      The most commonly towed car is a Jeep Cherokee, and next is Saturns, and Volkswagons are only towed when they are wrecked.

       I knew all along that when towns need money, they send the police out to get it.

      The guy I talked to in line said that he was amazed at how many of the citations involved were for very minor infractions, some of which seemed random or made up.

      Professional Police of high positions have told me that really they only arrest people for pot when they can’t get them on something else.

     Clinton sure talks a good line, but on the issue of pot it sure seems the same old hypocritical sell out of the common man, regular working stiffs in a culture of limited pleasures.

      Everytime Clinton broke a promise or sold us out he blamed it on his wife from my point of view.

      Gephardt did at least make that speech in favor of an international minimum wage.   I saw him say that he respected the Working Class that he had come from.

       I finally did make it to work today, though I had to get guys from work to come and get me at the garage.

       The grind goes on, and if you have an extra dollar in your pocket that you don’t have to sweat over spending, enjoy it.

        Well, unless you stole it or extorted it…