Speeding Tickets

Now that I'm closing in on a hundred, I am a more careful driver, but there was a period of a few years when you might easily catch me driving too fast, roughly in my twenties and early thirties.

• In 1964 a Texas state trooper lit me up for doing 85 in a 75 zone, on the way from Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio to the Texas State Fair in Dallas. He gave me a ticket on which he identified the offense and showed me a series of items on the ticket, a checklist from which I could choose several options. I was to check one and submit the ticket by mail.
  
  One of the items was to pay the fine and end the matter. I could send the ticket and check to Waco County Justice of the Peace Joe N. Brown. Making payment being by far the simplest option, I searched the ticket for the amount I should pay and found . . . nothing.
  
  I wrote to Mr. Brown explaining the situation and promised that if he would only tell me what the amount of the fine was for doing 85 in a 75 zone I would send him a check.
  
  After a period of silence, I assumed that the mills of the Texas justice system must grind very slowly and that eventually someone would let me know. Ha!
  
  Several months later I got a call from the Orderly Room (company headquarters) informing me that there was a state trooper there with a warrant for my arrest and ordering me to report immediately. By then the ticket had disappeared from my thoughts and I had no idea what this was all about.
  
  Well, the state had issued the warrant, and it was for non-payment of the ticket. I was flabbergasted. I explained to the trooper that the ticket had no amount information and I had written to the JP, yada yada yada. He laughed and said "This happens all the time. The JP's do not get any postage money from the state and when they get a letter like yours they just pitch it." (A first class stamp was five cents in 1964. However, with Texas declining to provide ticket amounts, I can imagine that JP's might have received a *lot* of letters like mine.)
  
  On my promise to mail payment immediately, the trooper informed me of the amount, tucked the warrant in his pocket, and departed.
  
  
• In 1967, on returning from Vietnam, I drove from Corpus Christi, Texas, to New England for a 30 day leave. With me was my bridge playing friend Dolly, and we took her car. I had to drop her off in the D.C. area, and we drove across the bottom of the country and then up the east coast.
  
  In South Carolina a state trooper jumped right out of my trunk and stopped me for doing 80 in a 70 zone. Really, I have no idea where he came from I didn't see him as we approached wherever he was and I didn't see him get on the highway behind me. He was just *there*, suddenly.
  
  He asked for my license and the car's registration, which I provided. He frowned, looked at me, and asked, "What's this 'APO' in the address area?"
  
  I explained that it stood for "Army Post Office," that I had returned from Vietnam a couple of days earlier, and that I would change it in about a month, when I got to my next post, in Arizona.
  
  But *this* trooper wasn't saluting any flags, and as he handed me my ticket he said, "Mr. Hendricks, you were safer in Vietnam than you are out here doing 80 miles per hour on our highways."
  
  
• In 1975 I got a break from a state trooper, not in the form of forgiveness, but in the form of breaking procedure. Driving north at night on I-95 in South Carolina (again!) I was stopped for speeding. I have no idea now what the limit was or what my speed was. The trooper told me to follow him and we drove to the home of a Justice of the Peace.
  
  We pulled up to the house, the trooper walked up to the front door, and I waited in my car. After a minute the trooper approached me and said, "He's not home. Now what I'm *supposed* to do is drive you to the jail and keep you until the JP gets home. But if you'll tell me that you will pay this fine then I'll give you a ticket and you can mail it in."
  
  I did, he did, and I did, you betchum, Red Ryder.
  
  
• Several years later - I can't place it exactly - I got the only speeding ticket I didn't pay. I was driving south on I-95 in Maryland, on the way to visit my brother, when I got pulled over for speeding. I don't remember the numbers but my offense was not particularly egregious, as I was not in the passing lane and was just doing whatever the traffic was doing.
  
  Parked at the side of the road was a string of cars and several cruisers. All the cars had plates from states other than Maryland. I'd been caught in a speed trap set for out of state drivers only, and those with Maryland plates were allowed to drive at speeds for which we were stopped and ticketed.
  
  I accepted the ticket silently and held on to it for a week or so, until I had returned to Massachusetts. At that point I just tore it up.

Army Burnouts

• In Vilseck, Germany, I knew two corporals, each with about eighteen years of service. Both had been busted some number of times, all due to incidents involving alcohol.
  
  One, Corporal Enwright, had a twin brother in the Army. They had enlisted at the same time and served together for a while until reassignments split them up. Enwright had risen as high as Sergeant First Class (E-7) before acquiring his problem, and had been busted three times. When I knew him his brother was a First Sergeant (E-8) while he was an E-4.
  
  
• In Grafenwoehr, Germany, I knew a Private (E-2) named Paine who had eighteen years in. I never saw him sober, morning, noon, or night. I don't know what the highest rank he had held was.
  
  I recall one morning when the First Sergeant had the whole company in formation. There was to be a visit by the Inspector General and the First Sergeant wanted to make certain that everything was just so. Most of us would be at work when the IG arrived, but everything in the barracks and in the company area was to be perfect. He ran down a list of items and asked the company, "Any questions?"
  
  Paine raised his hand.
  
  First Sergeant: "What is it, Paine?"
  
  Paine: "What time is it?"
  
  Paine would soon have his twenty years in and would not be allowed to reenlist, and when I left Germany the company was making a valiant effort to straighten him out enough so that they could promote him to E-3 and then E-4 for his retirement.
  
  
• In Corpus Christi, the payroll section in which I worked was nominally headed by a Specialist Fifth Class (E-5) named Kent, who was a burnout. I believe he had about sixteen years in, and he was just marking time. I don't know exactly what his problem was, but he was a nervous wreck, and he was terrified of being sent to Vietnam.
  
  I say "nominally headed" because although I was a Specialist Fourth Class (E-4), the Personnel Officer had instructed me to run the department and Kent to do whatever I told him to do. Kent bought in without a murmur.
  
  The payroll section consisted of four men - Kent, a draftee who had about six months remaining before discharge, a new man - a PFC (E-3), and me. Our outfit was a special project, and when the batallion went to Vietnam the finance records would remain in Corpus Christi. There would be one enlisted man from the finance section accompanying the batallion, to handle payroll matters on site and to communicate with the Corpus Christi Office. I talked to the Personnel Officer and we agreed that Kent would be inadequate for the job. That left unohoo.
  
  Made E-5 a couple of months before we went, though.

She'd Cut Your Throat for an Overtrick

In 1965, preparatory to heading for Vietnam, I was transferred to Corpus Christi, Texas. During the first few days I decided to check out the local duplicate bridge scene. I went to a club on a night that a game was scheduled and introduced myself. As is customary more or less everywhere, the club found a partner for me, and I was paired with a local gentleman who was at loose ends for that game.

We got along well and had a decent game, although not a great one. Early in the session I was declarer in a hand that seemed to have no particularly unusual dangers, but the result was gruesome. I got slaughtered. I made a note of the board number so I could check the results at the end of the night and learn whether my partner and I had made a bidding mistake, or whether I had played the hand badly, or just what the scoop was.

We finished the last round early and I hunted down the board. A sixtyish woman was playing the hand in exactly the same contract, and her opponents were hacking her to death. I stood behind her and watched. She sensed that someone was behind her, turned around, looked up at me, and said, "Hi, sweetie. They've got me by the ying-yang. (Yes, I know it's yin and yang, but that's what she said.) And so I met Dolly, who is turning over in her grave at the thought of being called "Dolly."

It turned out that the slaughters we had undergone were a "normal" result for that hand, which was an aberration if ever there was one. Our bidding and play had been "normal," and no one did any better.

Dolly and I became bridge partners for the next year or so. She was one of the two best bridge players I have ever been partnered with. She would cut your throat for an overtrick, and found overtricks where most players didn't even think to look, and she defended more tenaciously than General McAuliffe at Bastogne (well, Google it then).

She was a widow and used to her independence, and could be crusty but was generally an entertaining person.

We played together for a year, perhaps a little more, and then I was sent to Vietnam. Thirteen months later I was assigned to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, but a couple of stops were necessary prior to reporting. My car was stored in Corpus Christi, and I retrieved that. It was a 1966 Fiat Spider, a convertible with five forward gears on the floor. It got 40 miles per gallon, but had no acceleration and was not the most comfortable car for a long drive, which I was about to undertake as I planned to drive to Massachusetts for a thirty day leave.

Dolly invited me for a home cooked dinner, my first in more than a year, and it was wonderful. She had a brand new Chevy and a sister in Washington, D.C., and I talked her into making the drive across the country with me - in her car. I bribed her with promises to play at local bridge clubs along the way (we had a national bridge club directory). In the event, we only played once as the drive took just a couple of days. We played at a club in Mississippi, where we were surrounded by friendly people (we came in first).

Several trip-related incidents come to mind:

• At some point the eastbound Interstate was under repair and we were shunted over to the westbound side, two lanes, one now temporarily eastbound. After a few minutes we encountered an uphill climb. Halfway up, I saw a truck cresting the hill and coming toward us and a car trying to pass it in our lane. We - and that's pretty much everyone on the road - were doing 65 mph and there was no chance he would get past the truck, get behind the truck, or atomize before we met. I went right over the embankment, driving on grass, dodging construction equipment (I do not recall any workmen being present), and braking a little at a time, and was soon able to get back up to the road. By that time we were well on the other side of the hill and I will never know whether that moron killed himself or anyone else.
  
  Dolly lit a cigarette and never said a word.
  
  
• We needed gas and were on a long stretch of highway with no oases. When it began to look critical I got off the highway and onto the access road, hoping to find a gas station. In a heavily wooded stretch we came across a shack - literally, a shack - with two gas pumps in front of it. I pulled up to the pumps and out came a big, pot-bellied, middle-aged man in overalls. He walked to the front of our car, stopped, looked at the license plate, walked to the back of the car, stopped, looked at the license plate, and walked back to my window.
  
  "You want gas?"
  
  "Yup."
  
  "We don't sell gas."
  
  I speculate that sometime during the preceding hundred years someone from Texas had done something to someone from Mississippi, and it had never been forgotten or forgiven.
  
  Still on the access road, we finally found a gas station that sold gas, even to Texans. I stopped in front of the pumps and Dolly bounded out of the car and headed for the rest rooms. When we were on our way again she said, "That was the filthiest rest room I've ever been in."
  
  "What did you do?"
  
  "Honey, some women are standers and some women are sitters."
  
  
• We stopped briefly in Maryland so I could see my brother Billy, who was in the Navy. I introduced Dolly and Billy, and immediately heard:
  
  Dolly: "You're too fat."
  
  Billy: "You're too old."
  
  That charming exchange ensured that my reacquaintance with my brother was brief, and we were soon on our way again.