it was january 25, 2015. my grandson noah and i had just spent the day at a friends house. my friend is actually a person working for my wife. he is a young man with two small children. the oldest is a boy the age of noah. they are good friends and quite compatible.
the dad is a good friend of mine, as mich as any hermit like me can have a friend. i went over this day so he could switch out the struts on my old volvo. he does that kind of thing on the side and i like the benefit of my service dollar to go to friends instead of strangers if possible. so the kids played and men worked in the garage.
we left before dark and headed home, about 35 miles. the car felt a lot better. as i got closer to home i was noticing a slight glitch still. vovlo has a complicated set up as opposed to all the other struts my friend had done. it must be part of that luxury ride, which it certainly has. it was slight but a noise was still there. we would get to make the trip again, it seemed.
noah fell asleep on the toll roads so the winding hills as we approached lago vista was a quiet ride. this stretch is filled with cops of every stripe. there are two counties, three cities, state cops and constibles. it never pays to speed. its all the cops have to do.
i was almost home on a four lane road with a 30mph limit. it goes past an elementary, winds past the cop shop and library and town hall and parks association. then it makes another turn and goes down hill slightly as it heads for the lake. there are a few businesses just before my turn off.
as i turn the corner to head down the hill i glance at my speedometer. cops could be lurking and it is dusk so its really hard to see. this place is literally crawling with deer. i am in the right hand lane and paying attention to the side of the road. i glance at the one oncoming traffic - a white suv of some kind. i turn back to the side of the road to see if i can see any eyes looking out at me.
as i near the road to my street i slow down and signal and change lanes. there i notice for the fist time a patrol car triple parked in front of the businesses just before my turnoff. he has his park lights on but no headlights. as i am nearly parallel with him he turns on his lights and does a u turn to stop me. i pull over as soon as i make my turn and he pulls in behind me.
this is somewhat of a surprise to me.the cops stopped my wife and i when we first got to lago vista three years before. they warned us of a light out on our car and told us then that they just look for drunks and drugs and welcome to the community, a resort and retirement enclave 30 minutes from austin on the north side of lake travis. i figured maybe he didnt recognize the car or maybe he noticed i hadnt put my 2015 registration sticker on the windshield.
im a little fuzzy on the initial contact because i wasnt alarmed in any way. he told me i was speeding and my registration was expired. im thinking "what?" i said to him youve got to be kidding and he said no, he had me 44 in a 30. he asked me if i was in a hurry. i said no, im just going home. he said i slowed down when i saw him. i said this is where i always slow down and turn to go home. he asked me again if i was in a hurry for some reason, some emergency or something. i thought about it briefly and said no, my grandson is sleeping in the back and im just going to the house with him. i told him there was no way i was speeding.
he went back to his car and by the time he came back to me i had found my sticker in the glove box. he scratched that off the ticket and handed it to me, telling me the usual court date and sign here and put that sticker on as soon as i get home. when he left my car and let me go i had two impressions. one was that he decided to pull me over at the spur of the moment, like maybe he saw the 2014 number on my windshield. the other was that it didn go the way he thought it would and he kinda regretted giving me a ticket. just an impression but something didnt set right with him. i wasnt the moving violator he was looking for.