Ticket in Cloudcroft.
My father, Pa Wetzel, and his older Sister [my aunt> stopped through El Paso on their way back to Big D, and who knows where from there?
They wanted to hang out, see some sites, cruise around El Paso, Southern New Mexico, do the tourist thing for a day. But first, a comment about age, my father is in his seventies, his sister, is older than that. Mighty spry, too, age or no age. They’re kind of funny, as they keep nattering and looking after each other. Pa Wetzel has taken to using to using two canes, and he is continuously forgetting them. His sister helps remind him, just as she forgets her own cane.
Running around with them was serious good fun. I blocked out nothing, absolutely nothing, for the 12 hour period I was with them. I will always maintain that I’m the best driver in the family, and one look at my recorded history of legal infractions would indicate that I did tend to drive a little fast, but I’m pretty careful. I aven’t run into anything in over two decades.
We meandered up 54 towards Sierra Blanca. In the distance, as the snow-covered mountain drew into sight, there was some discussion about whether it was a cloud or a mountaintop. I knew it was a mountain, I just let them argue their points until we got a little closer.
We were just sort of chugging along, stopped at one place to get some pictures, stopped in Alamagordo at coffee shop I knew about, the Olive Branch. Then we wandered up towards Cloudcroft. In the middle of town, there was a flashing light that school zone. I was going about 30 mile an hour, and slowed down, mindful of the fact that a cop was sitting **right there** and guess what? He tagged me. I was going slow enough, when he started to turn around, I was going to let him cut in front of me, he motioned me forward, then turned on his lights and pulled me over. I laughed. I dug out my Texas Driver License, pa Wetzel grumbled mightily, and his Sister started to make a fuss, “You weren’t doing anything wrong!”
Rent car insurance, license, Texas tags, stern looking state trooper, I wasn’t about to argue. After that coffee in Alamagordo, I needed to relive myself as well, but I wasn’t about to do that with the officer around.
Back up a bit, when the folks had rolled into town, Pa Wetzel had been exclaiming how fast his Sister had been driving, “all the way from Marfa.”
I signed for my ticket, $82 dollars in the mail in the next 30 days. “You weren’t going 34 MPH,” the both of them argued. If I’d given them a chance, they’d have argued, right then and there with the cop, then the judge.
“Look at it this way, I’m taking the bullet for you guys, okay?” [“So shut up, already,” I thought.> I had more than half an hour of a diatribe aimed at small town cops, taking advantage of tourists, and so forth to listen to. Plus, I my aunt was well prepared to get in a and duke it out with the judge, “There is NO WAY you were going no 34 miles an hour. Not at all. Maybe 25, but not any faster than that!”
Okay, so here’s a couple of points: I was over the posted speed limit in a school zone. I wasn’t going 34, as the ticket suggests, but I know better than to argue with a uniformed officer. After I got the ticket, though, I did ask for directions to Ruidoso. The officer’s demeanor changed, he smiled a toothy grin, and gave us excellent directions to backroad that shaved a few miles off our route.
Didn’t stop the grumbling from passengers, though.
We wound up in Ruidoso at the Tex-Mex place, nice signage: Tex-Mex – Ruidoso and Lubbock. I didn’t get the connection, but I never claimed to understand some things. The food was excellent, and the price? I love New mexico cuisine for a reason: cheap and hot. Now if I can just find that one girl like that….
And that ticket? Although my family has offered to pay for it, I think I can afford it, although, it cuts heavily into my profit for the weekend.
