FIRSTS – VOLUME II

This is my second “first time” story. Probably do a couple more before I move on to something else. Idk. Whatevs.

  

First Traffic Stop

This one’s a doozy. I was 16 and I was driving intoxicated. I know it sounds glib and irresponsible to just say that like it’s not a big deal. But in 1981, it wasn’t remotely the big deal it is now. You’ll just have to take my word for it on that. Plus, I was 16. So there’s that, too.

It was a rainy and cold Saturday night in February and we were making the drag in my 1978 Jeep CJ-7. It was about 10:30. I don’t remember who was sitting beside me, or if anyone at all was sitting on the passenger side of the back seat. But I do know the seat behind me was occupied by a young man and that his name was Jim.

I remember Jim because he was the person who dumped beer on my head about 30 seconds before I got pulled over by a state trooper.

See, when you’re 16 and a new driver and reckless and a complete dope and driving a Jeep and, let’s not forget, you’re a complete dope, you do super-smart stuff like drive over things instead of around them because you’re driving a Jeep and all those other reasons. We were parked at the A&W Drive-In (similar to Sonic) and when it was time to leave, I drove over the sidewalk in front of me, rather than backing out of my spot. And in my excitement to execute this douchebaggy maneuver, I failed to tell my passengers of my intentions and they were all caught quite unawares by the resulting bump.  

We were drinking Coors from a can and Mickey’s Big Mouths, which came in green glass bottles shaped like a hand grenade and had openings at least twice the size of a regular beer bottle. And when I bounced up one side of the sidewalk and off the other, the lurching sent Jim’s bottle of Mickey’s sloshing everywhere, including all over my head and my shirt, all of which I thought was just an absolute hoot.

I peeled out of the parking area and raced up to where the driveway met the highway. I paused for the briefest of moments and then slid and skidded onto the rain-slick highway. Two seconds later, I saw flashing red and blue lights in my mirror.  

Like I said before, these were the days before MADD, but even by the standard of the day, I figured I was in huge trouble. I got out of the car and waited for the cop to approach me.  

He was not happy. In fact, I would describe him as clichéd-rural-sheriff-from-a-1970s-movie-or-TV-show unhappy, because he actually yanked his hat from his head and slammed it to the ground a la Rosco P. Coltrane whenever he was once again bested by “those Duke boys.”

As it turned out, my dramatic peel-out from the A&W parking lot onto the highway had forced the trooper to seek the safety of the bar ditch to avoid a collision, something he apparently took no pleasure in doing.

 I stood in the drizzling rain shivering, but not from the cold. As the trooper approached, I could see him clearly trying to regain his composure. I stood, wallet in hand, awaiting his instructions.

“Son, how you answer the next several questions is going to determine how you spend the rest of this night.”

“Yes, sir.”

I was hoping there would be no math, although I was always up for a state’s capitals quiz and had actually rehearsed saying the alphabet backwards for just such an occasion. Bring it on.

“I need to see your driver’s license.”

The first questions are always the easiest.

“Yes, sir.”

Wanting to look honest (because it was too late to look law-abiding), I maintained eye contact with him as I reached into the compartment within my wallet where I kept my license. I removed it and extended my hand toward the trooper.

“That’s not gonna work, son.”

Now, technically, this was not a question. But it sounded like trouble nonetheless.

I looked down at my hand and saw that I had offered him my mom’s Mobil gas card. Explaining, unnecessarily, about how I’d gotten gas earlier that day and had slid the credit card under my driver’s license but then forgot about it and so when I felt something plastic-y I just assumed it was—

“May I see your driver’s license please?”

He had now asked me the same “easy” starter question twice now. I was not off to a good start.

Breaking eye contact so as to ensure I did not hand him my Duncan High School Future Business Leaders of America Membership Card, I located my actual driver’s license and gave it to him.

“Have you been drinking beer tonight?”

My hair and shirt were wet with Mickey’s malt liquor and I’m sure my breath reeked of alcohol. So I gave what seemed to be the only available to me.

“No sir.”

But then I buckled under follow-up questioning.

“Son?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How many?”

Calculating….calculating…

“Three. Four at the most.”

“Son?”

Oh, this guy was good.

“Six. No, seven.”

“Is there any beer in the car?”

“No, sir.”

“I’m going to check.”

Again, not a question. But it seemed to require a response just the same.

“Then, yes sir.”

“You’d better pray there aren’t any open containers in there.”

These non-questions were gonna be the death of me.

“Oh, there aren’t sir.”

The trooper walked me over to the back of the Jeep, and I watched him unsnap the vinyl flap serving as the rear “windshield.” He pulled the flap back and shined his flashlight into the small space between the tailgate and the back seat, at which time I discovered the small space was surprisingly watertight, because there were two empty Coors beer cans actually floating – like tiny aluminum boats – in about an inch of beer.

It seems that, when the cop’s lights came on, my passengers had attempted to hide their current and former beer cans “behind the back seat” – an act of evidence-hiding subtlety which took place in full view of the trooper who was just a few feet behind us at the time and shining multiple, very bright, headlights and spotlights in the direction of the rear end of my vehicle.

They might as well have tossed the cans onto the hood of his cruiser.

The trooper directed his flashlight at me. The jig was up, so I figured I should just get out in front of the situation and not wait for a question.

“Um.”

“Please follow me to my car.”

I had most certainly failed the test. I sat in the passenger seat of his cruiser and watched him confiscate all our beer. First, he stacked all the cans on the ground beside my car. Then, he went through each one, dumping out the open ones and setting the full ones to the side. That concluded, he gathered up the unopened cans and carried them to the rear of his cruiser. In a moment, he sat down in the driver’s seat next to me.

The trooper made a great show of talking on the radio, checking my record, and running the Jeep’s tags. There was much encoded chatter passing back and forth between him and the dispatcher. Meanwhile, I sat there awaiting the inevitable.  

I was absolutely going to jail.

“Mr. Weaver, this is a written warning.”

It was the first non-terrifying non-question of the night.

“What does that mean?”

He explained some blah blah blah to me, but all I heard was “You are the luckiest bastard alive.”

Now, I assumed at the time – and thought for many years – that my unexpected free pass was the result of the fact that there were only two Weavers living in Duncan at the time and they were both attorneys. The joke, of course, was on the trooper if he thought the Weaver who was my dad would do anything other than assist the District Attorney with his prosecution of me.

But none of that mattered anyway, because I know now that I was wrong about the trooper’s motivation to let me go.

Again, remembering that this was still the era of “boys will be boys,” it’s clear to me now that this was a guy who was about 15 minutes from the end of his shift, yet he most likely worked out of Lawton, which was 45 minutes away. Arresting me would have meant a trip to the Stephens County Jail in Duncan for my booking, then all kinds of paperwork and so on, and only after all of that would he get to drive back to Lawton and “clock out.”

The guy just wanted to go home and relax on a Saturday night after a long shift. Besides, he’d almost gotten killed by an idiot teenager just a few minutes before.  

So he took our beer and let me off with a warning.

It would be the cheapest traffic stop I would ever have.

(Next Up: My first time to actually be placed inside a jail cell.)

© 2014 Lee B. Weaver