That Just Isn’t Right
Regular blog readers may remember a post I wrote on February 27 titled Just Shut Up, in which I said that sometimes silence is, indeed, golden. A Gypsy Journal reader at the Affinity rally said he learned that while in Albuquerque.
He said that when he arrived at the rally grounds it was late in the day, and someone on the parking crew informed him that one of his headlights was burned out.
The next evening he and his wife went to a local restaurant for dinner with some friends, and he had forgotten about the headlight until they were leaving the restaurant and one of their dinner companions spotted it and told him. On the way back to the fairgrounds, he stopped at an auto parts store and bought a replacement headlight.
He said it was dark by then and he was a block from the fairgrounds when a police officer going the opposite direction made a U-turn and pulled him over to tell him his headlight was out. He said he told the officer that he knew it, and in fact had just bought a replacement bulb not 5 minutes earlier.
He told me that the officer then said, “So you are admitting to me that you know you are driving an unsafe vehicle, which is a misdemeanor?”
He again told the officer that he had just bought a replacement headlight, and the officer again said “So you are admitting that you knew the headlight was out, and you are driving the vehicle?”
My friend said “Yeah, if you put it that way, I guess so.”
Then the cop issued him a ticket for violation of Section 66-3-801 of the state motor vehicle code. Once he had signed the ticket, the officer told him “If you had told me you were not aware of the burned out headlight, all you would have gotten was a warning ticket with no fine.”
I’m not sure I would have believed him if he hadn’t shown me the ticket, and his wife confirmed his story.
Now folks, I’m usually a big supporter of law enforcement. Our policemen and women do a job I’d never want to have to do. But this sucks. I know my way around Albuquerque a little bit, and on the area of Central Avenue around the fairgrounds, you can buy a hooker, any kind of drugs you want, or anything else that comes to mind. And yet this officer had time to hassle an old guy and his wife in an out of state pickup, because he told the truth. That just isn’t right.
Thought For The Day – There can be no failure for a man who has not lost his courage.
