The Car Meme

Hammer has a meme on his blog discussing cars we once owned and wished we had never parted with.

Since he was kind enough not to tag anyone, and since there is a funny story that goes with this truck, I shall voluntarily regale you with said story.

Back in the early nineties, I was training retrievers for a living and drove a 1984 Ford Ranger 4×4. I bought it used from a fellow pro trainer when he upgraded his truck. The rig was a two-tone, tan and brown flatbed Ranger with a ten hole, aluminum dog box bolted on the back.

The rig had been built for shipment to upstate New Yawk, where apparently air-conditioning was still an option and not standard. Driving it in Louisiana was an extended exercise of stewing in your own juices. After a long summer drive I’d emerge from the rig with meat falling off the bone.

But it was rugged, and it was dependable. I put a hundred thousand miles on it before I even added an air conditioner. It had over two hundred thousand on the original engine when I closed my kennels for good, and still it ran like a top.

So when I embarked upon my career of Saving Lives and Stamping Out Disease, I sold the dog box and kept the rig. When I parted company for the first time with Podunk Ambulance, I moved to south Louisiana with all my worldly possessions strapped to the flatbed, ala the Beverly Hillbillies.

I had my clothes in Hefty bags, a few milk crates full of books, some pots and pans, a full-sized bed left to me by a former patient, a rickety entertainment center, and an old leather recliner with matching ottoman.

And strapped in that recliner was this fellow, sans clothing and accessories:
He was part of my severance package with Podunk Ambulance. I thought I was owed one figure in back pay, and they countered with another, much lower figure. So, amidst heated negotiations and threats to call lawyers, we arrived at an amicable cash settlement with the manikin thrown in for good measure.

So it’s 1:00 am and I’m driving through central Louisiana with this naked, lifelike manikin tied to a chair, in the middle of a driving rainstorm, when I notice that a corner of the tarp covering my belongings has worked its way loose.

So I slow down, hoping vainly that the rest of the thing wouldn’t come undone, and start looking for some place to pull over. Before I could do that, I pick up a tailgater.

He’s close enough that I can only pick out the glow of his headlights in my side mirrors, and I can’t see him in my rearview because of the huge mound of junk in the back. Immediately, I had him pegged for a cop.

What in Hades is this? I’m not speeding, I’m not weaving, everything on the truck is legal. So why is he following me?

After a few miles, I start having my doubts that it actually is a cop.

A cop would have pulled me over by now. A cop wouldn’t be so reckless as to follow me this close.

So I speed up, taking care to stay below the limit. I slow down. I tap the brakes. And still this guy rides my bumper. Finally, I notice another car approaching from the opposite direction. As he gets closer, I see that he’s a Sheriff’s Deputy from that particular parish. After he passes me, he lights up his cruiser and whips it around.

Finally! Now he’ll get this asshole off my tail. Thank God for the Po-leece when you need ’em.

So he pulls up behind me and my tailgater and follows us for a bit, and then he whips out and goes around me…

and then pulls abreast of me, crowding in until I give up and stop in the emergency lane. About this time the cruiser behind me (yep, it was a cop after all) lights up and gets on the PA speaker.

“Out of the truck NOW!”

*sigh*

Thus begins my introduction to that quaint euphemism, the “felony traffic stop.”

Do you know how difficult it is to open your door and exit a vehicle while keeping your hands in sight? It requires rolling down the damned window and opening the thing from the outside, which only served to soak me to the bone before I even got out of the truck. Even better, the seat was soaked, so I didn’t even have the promise of driving in dry comfort once I had changed clothes.

That is of course, presuming I stayed out of jail or successfully avoided being perforated at my first sudden move. Add to this the fact that I was performing this door-opening exercise with my eyes screwed shut against the glare of the spotlight on my windshield, helpfully pointed by the Nice Deputy in front of me.

So, I assume a prone position on the pavement at the rear of the truck at the direction of the officer behind me. I believe his exact words were, “On the ground, asshole! Face on the ground and arms spread out!”

Rather than looking around for the asshole, I correctly assumed that Barney was addressing me, so I promptly complied with the request.

*sigh* Someone has seen too many episodes of Cops.

While making kissy faces to the pavement, a pair of Rocky tactical boots appeared in my peripheral vision, just ahead of me and to the right. I felt the other guy grab my wrists and handcuff me. Where their weapons were pointed at the time, my vision couldn’t tell, but I’d hazard a guess that they were trained somewhere in the middle of my sizeable thorax.

Once cuffed, I figured they’d let me stand up or at least kneel. But nooooo, they left me prone on the pavement, rapidly assuming ambient temperature in the driving rain. But hey, the urine warmed me considerably. The Rocky boots in front of me moved over between me and the truck bed and I heard the tarp being thrown back…

“Sheeeeeeit,” muttered the Rocky boots in utter disgust. “You dumbass. ‘Dead body’ you said. ‘Need backup’ you said. In the middle of an effin’ monsoon, no less. Do me a favor – don’t call me again tonight.” The boots stomped back to the cruiser from whence they came and drove away. I never even got to see what the deputy looked like.

The local cop who had initiated the stop hauled me to my feet and briefly interrogated me before removing the cuffs and sending me on my way. I don’t know whether the interview was so short because of his embarassment or the frigid rain pelting us, but I was back in the truck five minutes later. He even apologized for the misunderstanding and helped me tie the tarp back down.

Last year, the same cop pulled me over for speeding. He had me cold at 10 mph over the limit. He didn’t recognize me at first, but when I reminded him of that night nearly ten years a
go, he looked at me blankly, started to chuckle and handed me back my license.

“I suppose I owe you this one, son. Now git.”

And git I did, you can believe that.