Crossing the line

Perhaps you have experienced that awful, sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach as you first see the blue-light strobes flashing in your rear view mirror.

Yep, I got a ticket.

I didn’t like it, but I knew I was guilty of crossing a double-yellow line when I passed the slow moving truck. I knew it didn’t matter that I had passed as the end of the double-yellow. I knew it didn’t matter that I could see that nothing was approaching for almost a mile ahead.

I pulled onto the shoulder and stopped. It was then that I noticed that the car with the flashing blue lights did not seem to have any police markings. At second glance, I noted that the blue lights were inside the windshield.

The young man who approached my vehicle as if I was suspected of being on the “Ten Most Wanted” list also was minus the usual police uniform. He wore dark pants and a black tee-shirt with gold letters spelling out the word “POLICE.” Under other circumstances I might have taken him for a rock band fan. I never saw a badge.

He took my title, proof of insurance and license, then returned to his vehicle. A few minutes later, he returned my papers and presented me a ticket. Did I say one ticket? Actually, I had been awarded one ticket with two offenses on it.

“It won’t do you any good to argue,” he informed me. Still, I did not understand how I could get two tickets for one offense — crossing a double yellow line when I passed that truck.

“Can you tell me what the fine for this is going to be?” I asked.

“No, you’ll have to ask Renee, when you call the number on the ticket. Of course, you can argue with the judge.”

Now about getting two tickets for one offense: The young man had ticketed me for passing the truck in “a prohibited area” — the strip of highway with a double-yellow. He also had given me a second ticket for “careless driving because you crossed that double-yellow line.”

Silly me, I thought crossing the double-yellow when I passed that truck was my only offense. Heck, I only crossed that line “in a prohibited zone.” I was absolutely certain that I only crossed it one time.

You  can imagine my joy when I got home and called Renee to find out what the damages were going to be. Just $305 that I could pay with a cashier’s check or money order. That’s what Renee said it would be. Or I could drive back halfway across Arkansas, pay for gas, food and motel and still probably be allowed to pay $305 or more in an appearance before the judge of the District (municipal) Court of Grady, a small town just south of Pine Bluff.

But was I really in Grady when I got my double ticket for crossing a double-yellow? After all, there were corn fields on either side of U.S. 65, and the sign pointing down a side road toward Grady had been couple of miles before I hit the “no passing” zone.

I asked Renee, who did not give me a direct answer.

“We have jurisdiction on Highway 65,” she said.

Who gives city police “jurisdiction” on federal highways that may not be within a particular municipality’s corporate limits? Thank goodness, I wasn’t speeding. I might have gotten the idea that Grady is a speed trap.

And where did that unmarked police car come from? I could swear it wasn’t behind me when I crossed that double-yellow. Do you think that young lawman might have been hiding in one of those corn fields in the way out suburbs of Grady?

Life, luck and -30-

P.S.: Does any of this sound familiar to you? Does it remind you of any particular community? Moffett? Camden? Maybe that little town in Louisiana where a fine young city police officer caught me speeding on a federal highway that wound through a national forest a few years ago? He assured me the national forest was within his “jurisdiction.”

Sometimes, the cops are there to protect us from ourselves, of course, but I don’t have to like it. And two tickets for one offense is RIDICULOUS!