Officer No-Tooth

Part of the charm of the old place was that it was so not the city. In the city, it cost a ton of dough to get by, parking at night would take a half hour, and a trip to the local Safeway required full makeup because even at midnight you were likely to run into someone from a rock band you knew.

The old place, where we moved after we left the city, was refreshing in its price, and its anonymity. What we gained in pocket change, anonymity and parking spaces, however, we paid for in a lack of agreed-upon values and behaviors. That said, it kind of rocked, from an anthropological standpoint.

And more on that later, but today I am reminded of this:

The old place is in unincorporated county. From a practical standpoint, this means you're left alone and you're LEFT ALONE. When authority asserts itself, it doesn't necessarily have the checks and balances that a constabulary that reports to a city council has. A man who I will refer to only as Officer No-Tooth is the law in those parts.

One absurdly rainy evening, during the second rainiest month in the year, my geezerly old Tercel and I made it down the main drag of the old place. There are only two stop lights in our town, untimed. No turn of events could have resulted in the speed I was claimed to have been clocked at, but I admit that I was speeding.

I hung a left at the feed store, and traveled the two blocks to our house. I parked. The sheriff pulled alongside me. He got out and asked me to roll down my window. He was missing one of his front teeth, adding to his questionable Deliverance-like air of authority. "You know you were driving 60 down Parker?" he asked. I sputtered and laughed. "I'm sorry, but my car doesn't go 60." He said "You live around here?" "Yep. I live right here." "O.K., well if you stand in the corner in the rain for five minutes, I will not give you a ticket." "You got a deal" I said, knowing that there wasn't anyone within screaming distance who could possibly help me. I got out of my car, stood on the corner, smiled and waved like a prom queen as he pulled a u-turn and drove away.

I braved the pouring rain for about two minutes, then bolted for the house.