Clean Living - Luck Has Nothing to Do With It

My husband asked me not to write this one, then he gave me a title. So, since he gave me the title, I feel obligated to now share the story!

First of all, to fully understand this story, you must have a good image of my husband. He is over six foot tall, he just shaved his head again this weekend, he has a long red goatee and when he has his dark sunglasses on he looks a bit scary. I have seen women lock their doors when he walks by at the gas station. Usually, my handsome husband wears one of those super bright safety green or safety orange shirts, working road construction such shirts make a lot of sense. He is very hard to miss. To top this look off, he drives a beat up Buick that is his pride and joy. It rumbles and is rusty and he loves it dearly. He says there is no smoother ride, and he is always looking for a newer one to replace his old one. Out back in our field, we have his first Buick that served him well until it finally fully died. He loved it too much to get rid of it, besides; he calls it his ‘parts’ car.

Got a good image of him?

This Labor Day weekend he had to work at his construction job on night shifts from midnight to noon. On Monday, he was done with his shift when the bosses needed him to do a few odds and ends which got him headed home around two thirty. At this time, he was starving hungry. The boys and I had long before eaten lunch and he decided to stop at the grocery story a mile and a half down the road from our house to get some food at the Deli.

Here on our farm we are just outside of a much loved tourist stop. People flock here on any holiday weekend and since this weekend was so nice and it was the last weekend of the summer, the place was packed. We are feeling like old cranky locals complaining about the traffic and so forth. The cops keep a close eye on our newly (this summer) completed road and we are thankful for them, we don’t need speeders. Besides that, the slower people go the more likely they are to stop by our farm stand for our fresh, literally home grown produce.

So, my overtired husband stops into the Deli to get a hot lunch for his starving tummy and has to fight all the tourist loading up on beer and ice and grill meat for their lake fun and all he wants to do is get home. He jumps into his Buick and can nearly taste his hot lunch he will be eating in 1.5 miles down the road.

When he was .5 miles from our home, he passed a cop headed down toward all the touristy area. Except this police officer hit his brakes and turned around quickly to follow my husband.

He forgot to put his seat belt on.

He had worn it all the way home but when he got into the car to head home from the store, he had just plumb forgotten it and the cop could easily see that with his bright safety orange shirt on.

He pulled into the driveway since the police officer hadn’t even turned his lights on yet and since he was home, he just drove all the way up to his normal parking spot beside the house.

This is not an advised thing to do. Police officers don’t appreciate such actions.

But, we did not know this. The police officer sped into the driveway, pulled behind my husband who was about to get out of the car when the office warned him to stay still.

Well, from my perspective, I had had macaroni and cheese with the boys for lunch and that makes my teeth feel scummy so I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth because I just couldn’t take the nasty feel any longer when I heard the boys holler “Daddy is home! Daddy is home!” and then there was complete silence, which is highly unusual. I heard the kitchen door shut and S2 peeks into the bathroom door and says in a little voice “A police is in the driveway for Daddy.”

Images of the boys asking the police officer if he knew Roscoe Peco Train or if he had ever chased a car like the Dukes flashed in my head and I couldn’t get the toothpaste spit out of my mouth fast enough. I hurried out the door and there my husband is, leaning on the roof of his car, eating a potato log, while the police officer sat in his car. Surrounding my husband were four wide eyed, silent boys and one nine year old boy who had just moved in next door in our rental house. “What is he going to do, Daddy?” S1 asked.

“Well, I forgot my seat belt so I’ll probably get a ticket.”

The nine year old boy’s 15 year old brother comes out to check the situation out. “Don’t you think he could just give you a warning?”

“ ‘Fraid not,” my husband sighed.

I tried to get all the boys away from the scene. I lost S4 in the process and when I went out to find him loading rocks in a bucket to show the police officer all the cool rocks he had found, the rest of the boys all crept out to hang out with their daddy. It was if they were sure that he needed some support from them.

I looked at my husband, weariness heavy in his eyes and just sheer irritation that a fluke moment would cost him a ticket in front of all his boys.

In the end, perhaps because the boys looked so sadly, the police officer let my husband off with a warning…with a warning. “I will not let you off again, I guarantee you.” He assured my husband. He also gave him a brief instruction on never getting out of a vehicle or pulling into your home. My scary looking husband had looked like he was going to bolt and run and when my husband had handed over his license, the officer asked him “what am I going to find on your record?”

“Not a thing.” My husband assured him. He was right. There is not a thing on his record. Not even a speeding ticket.

My husband, truly shook up over the incident, sat down to eat his lunch and then he planned on getting our out door wood burner going so we had hot water for the day and then he was headed right to bed.

When he went to check the stove, we found a pipe had burst and he had to fix that before he could go to bed. I felt so bad for him I could have cried for him! He headed down to the hardware store to get the parts he needed before they closed, making certain he was buckled in tight.

As he was leaving the hardware store, the clerk (who knows us well, we are locals after all!) told my husband, “Watch out for cops, they are really watching everyone today.”

My husband retold the clerk his story. “You are the luckiest guy!” the clerk told him. “I have never ever heard of someone getting out of a seat belt ticket.”

“It’s not luck,” my husband told him, “It’s clean livin’.”

And probably a bunch of sad scared looking boys.

My husband got the pipe fixed quickly, took a hot shower, crawled into bed by 4:30 that evening and he slept till 5:30 the next morning. And every time we have headed out since then he hollers out to us, “Make sure you have your seat belt on!” and shows me his all buckled.

This is not a lesson we will forget quickly.

And to my husband, Love you! Thanks for working so hard all weekend! Hope you like how this blog turned out, thanks for giving me the great title! J