My Family: Chapter 57

The second time I ever saw a policeman or a patrol car I was with my father and our neighbor who lived next door to us. I was driving because they were drunk and Dad had passed out in the front seat with the neighbor passed out in the back. I don’t even remember where we had been or why we were driving around in the car. I decided that since I had a car and Dad couldn't say ‘no’, I would drive to Charleston, a city about 90 miles from Logan. I had to drive over Blair Mountain to get to Charleston.  

Now, I didn't know anything about driving in the city, we only had one red light in the town of Logan and no policemen only a Deputy Sheriff. Logan did get a policeman after I left West Virginia and when I came back it was as if there was a policeman on every corner. 

Of course, I got lost once I was in the city and turned down a street to find my way back, it was 3:00 in the morning and I was the only car on the street. All of a sudden there was a car in front of me with flashing lights on top of it and then one behind me.  I didn’t know what they were doing, the one in front of me was in the same lane as I was and we were heading straight toward one another. He pulled to one side just as I passed but another two took his place because I was not stopping. Three cars more were across the road behind me and one on each side of me. I was scared and wasn't going to stop for nothing. I slowed down to a crawl, almost to a coast.

With all the flashing lights in his face, Dad woke up. He asked me where we were, when I told him and he saw the cars on each side of us; he told me not to stop (he didn't know what they were doing either). By the time they got me to stop the car there was eight patrol cars surrounding us. They had slowed my car down to a crawl and we came bumper to bumper so I had to stop. Dad and I locked the doors and talked to them with the windows up. Finally, they told us who they were and we rolled the window down on the driver’s side of the car. They laughed at us because they figured it out that we hadn’t been in a city before. I think Dad really should’ve known who they were but he had just woken up and was still half drunk. I don’t think he was thinking clearly.  

The police said I was going the wrong way on a one way street and I hadn’t stopped for any of the red lights. I explained I hadn't see any red lights and asked them to point out the lights to me.  The traffic lights were on the corners instead of overhead in the middle of the street. They shined a flashlight into the neighbor’s face and asked about him. I said he was drunk and the owner of the car. I was so nervous that I forgot to put the car in park and when I took my foot off the brake, the car began to coast into the cop car in front of us. They yelled at me to brake and they are lucky I didn’t faint. They showed us how to get out of the city and on our way back to Logan. The neighbor did’t wake up until we got back home, and my dad and I never did tell him what had happen or where we had been.