Originally published at Medium.com. *
A few years back, when I lived in Portland, Oregon, a friend in Seattle was moving and had a bunch of garden stuff she wanted to get rid of. I had recently bought my house and desperately needed garden stuff.
So I drove my old beater Subaru to Seattle and loaded it up with marvelous things. I also had my bike with me on this trip, because reasons. Usually I tossed it in the back of the beater Subaru, but with the car full of garden stuff, I had to use the awkward tailgate bike rack.
And so, beater Subaru laden with Many Great and Wonderful Things, I headed home to Portland.
The I-5 corridor between Seattle and Portland should be a three-hour drive. Of course it is not, generally; so on the rare occasions when traffic does open up, drivers do not always, shall we say, strictly observe the speed limits.
I’m a careful driver. My other car is a little red convertible roadster (no, really; I only bought the old beater Subaru for hauling stuff, and for times when I needed to carry more than one passenger), so I’m also a dedicated, even perhaps ostentatious observer of speed limits. I like to set my cruise control for four MPH over the limit. Maybe five if I’m feeling crazy.
But the cruise control didn’t work on the old beater Subaru. So I just drove like a grandma, keeping an eye on the speedometer.
Until I got to Centralia, Washington.
Centralia is one of those places where the speed limit goes down — to supplement the local economy, I suppose. Not that the reason matters. I duly slowed down.
Unfortunately, nobody else wanted to slow down. They tailgated me. They crowded me. They flashed their lights. I sped up a little. I just wanted to get out of Centralia. Or even just into the right lane — but I couldn’t do that, it was too crowded, and onramps kept feeding into it.
And thus it came to pass that I was going 73 in a 60 zone. I knew I was speeding; I felt uncomfortable, pushed along by the cars behind me, who all felt that 73 was still too damn slow.
Be that as it may. Everyone may be speeding, but the cop gets to decide who to pull over, and he decided to flag down the out-of-state beater Subaru, laden with Many Great and Wonderful Garden Things.
As soon as I saw the lights in my mirror, I tried to comply…but I couldn’t. Heart pounding, mouth dry, I desperately scanned for a place to pull over. But of course, there was no shoulder at that point — just a stone wall. I could barely get into the right lane. Omigod he’s going to shoot out my tires if I don’t obey fast, I thought. I need to get off this freeway, I’m a good law-abiding citizen!
I settled for the triangle between the freeway and one of those onramps, cars whizzing by us on both sides. But at least I had managed to pull over.
He sat in his vehicle for a long time. I guess they do that — running your plates, waiting to see if you bolt, whatever. I had time to bring my panic down just a tiny bit, to look around my car, trying to see it through a cop’s eyes. I looked at the giant pots overflowing with shade plants that filled the back of the station wagon. I looked at the bags of soil and the decorative rocks.
I looked at the pickaxe on the front seat.
Finally, the patrolman got out of his vehicle and walked up to my passenger window.
He looked at the pickaxe on the front seat. And then up at me.
“Do you know why I pulled you over?”
“I was speeding, I’m so sorry,” I said. Contrite, cooperative, obedient. Totally safe and totally not a pickaxe-murderer. Yes, everyone else was speeding too. I knew there was no point in mentioning that. I knew the drill.
“I clocked you at 73 in a 60.”
“Entirely my fault. I’m really sorry.”
He was looking at my license and registration and insurance by this point.
And at the pickaxe.
Eventually, he said, “Just sit tight. I’ll be back,” and took all my documentation back to his vehicle.
I sat tight. I watched him in my rear-view mirror, imagining him calling for backup, for help in dealing with the clearly dangerous pickaxe-murderer he’d pulled over.
When he came back again, he leaned in the window, looked around at everything in the car, and said, “I’m giving you a citation for the speeding, but not for the bicycle that’s covering your back plate — but when you get home to Oregon, I want you to work out a different way to carry your bike.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And in the future, don’t pull over on a ramp like this — it’s too dangerous. There’s a shoulder about a half-mile down the road.”
“Yes, sir.”
He took one last look at the pickaxe, and then at the rather remarkable collection of gorgeous petrified wood pieces all over the passenger-side floor. “You didn’t dig all that out of a Washington State park, did you?”
“Oh! Gosh, no,” and I launched into a rambling and undoubtedly incoherent account of my friend, who was moving, and giving me all this gardening stuff, for my new house, and that she had collected all those pieces over many years, in lots of states very far away from here, none of which were Washington State…
I guess he believed me, or maybe just didn’t want to deal with it, because he gave me back my license and paperwork (and the ticket) and let me proceed on my way.
But wait. That’s not all.
Not three minutes after I was back on the road, a giant spider suddenly ran down the top of my head, my neck, and down my arm, then disappeared into my pants.
Obviously, since I am here telling you this now, I didn’t flip the car over in a screaming panic and roll down the hillside and burst into flames and perish in a fiery cataclysm…but it was a close thing.
I did manage to find that shoulder the officer mentioned, and get the spider out of my pants. The spider that had clearly emanated from one of the giant pots of shade plants in the back of the car.
Then, I somehow managed to dispel the second round of panic-adrenaline, get back into the car and finish the drive to Portland, all the while wondering how many more spiders were going to come out and ambush me — or were just taking up residence somewhere in the car.
I was never so happy to get home and out of that beater Subaru. I later gave the car to the Humane Society for the tax deduction, I didn’t even sell it.
And I always use cruise control on the freeway, no matter how many annoyed speed-demons are stuck behind me.
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*I recently realized that, though I’m not blogging much (ahem) these days, I am in fact doing a lot of personal-essay writing, on Medium.com; I’m going to periodically share favorite articles here.