Prairie Ramblings

By Tracy Sayler

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Prairie Grains is the
official publication of
the Minnesota
Association of
Wheat Growers,
North Dakota Grain
Growers Association,
South Dakota Wheat,
Inc., and the
Minnesota Barley
Growers Association.

Confessions of a Lead Foot Driver

You people who travel this time of year to places with such names as Big Sky and Lutsen Mountain need to be just a wee bit more sensitive to people like me, who cruise along at an illegal hyperspeed, listening to Dr. Laura on the radio bawl out some woman from New Jersey for being a bimbo, then almost swerve into the ditch when we slam on the brakes, frantically trying to force the red needle of the speedometer over to the left, because we think we’ve spotted a highway patrol car, but then, as we clutch our thumping, adrenaline-riddled chests, realize that we did not see the lights and siren apparatus that adorns most squad cars but rather, that we just passed some joker driving down the road with a SKI RACK strapped to the top of his Buick.

Special operative O.J. Simpson and I are closing in on iron-clad evidence that, along with identifying the real killers, will prove people who drive around with ski racks on the top of their vehicles all winter are funded through a special federal grant, in a covert police operation to get lead foots like me to slow down.

It’s working. The bulletin board at my auto insurance company has a poster with my picture on it, with the caption, "One More Ticket And On This Guy’s Premium, We All Go To Disneyland!"

I think I’m the only person to have been caught speeding through Gentilly, MN, one of those blink-and-you’ll-miss-it towns that has a highway running through it and a speed limit sign that people ignore and is not enforced—until I travel through.

Further, I am pleased to say that for your speeding ticket payment convenience, the state of Wisconsin accepts Visa and Mastercard. It’s true: Wisconsin troopers tote little credit card machines around in their squad cars. This offers an opportunity for economic development and some day, along with charging your speeding ticket you might also be able to slide into the back seat of a Wisconsin patrol car and select from a fine selection of beef sticks and cheeses.

All in the family

At least I’m not a smarty-pants when I get stopped, unlike my brother. Like the time he got stopped outside of Bismarck, ND for repeatedly swerving while westbound on I-94.

"What’s seems to be the problem here?" the patrolman asked, ready to administer a breathalizer test. My brother, who had not been drinking, replied: "Well, the ham keeps trying to slip out of my sandwich." Which prompted the irked patrolman to mutter before walking away, "if you want a picnic, go find a park."

Or the time my brother and a friend decided to drive through an implement dealer’s lot and browse farm equipment. This past-time is not uncommon: cruising equipment lots is the farmer’s equivalency to hanging out at the shopping mall. Except these two were scouring the lot after midnight on a Saturday, which, not surprisingly, drew the attention of the local constable, who pulled them over to see what they were up to.

Feeling picked on by the law for no reason, like the Duke Boys in the old TV show "The Dukes of Hazard," my easily agitated, Type-A personality sibling blurted, "You know, you’re just a small-town cop looking for something to do." Yowch. Again, my brother was not drinking and did not break any laws here, but did breach the code of etiquette stressed time and time again by syndicated columnist Miss Manners: never tick off a cop. Nothing became of this incident, although I don’t believe my brother will be receiving any complimentary tickets to the Policemen’s Ball any time soon.

The Feminine Advantage

You know who has an innate ability to dodge speeding tickets? Women. Women don’t get speeding tickets, they get warnings. My wife was pulled over for speeding twice in a span of a few weeks BY THE SAME OFFICER. Two warnings.

Another woman I know got pulled over for speeding, and when asked why by the patrolman, chirped, "I’m sorry officer. The kids and I were just driving along and sing, singing away." She got a warning. Had a long-haired dude with a handlebar mustache riding a Harley said that, he would’ve got the ticket AND be searched for drugs faster than Bill Clinton can down a Chicken McNugget.

Just as sure as women only enter bathrooms in multiples of two, they’ll use an instinctive survival technique, what behavioral psychologists refer to as "The Feminine Advantage" to get out of speeding tickets. Even if the most stalwart of women, say Janet Reno, were pulled over, she’d bat her eyelashes innocently, bite gingerly on one of her fingernails and ask sweetly: "um, was I really going that fast, officer?"

You can guess the only time this doesn’t work—when a woman is pulled over by a female trooper. Then it’s Ticket City.

(Feminists outraged by sexist insinuations made in this column are invited to respond to the author, who is being harbored along with "Satanic Verses" author Salmon Rushdie at: The Canadian Wheat Board, 423 main street, Winnipeg, Canada, R3C 2P5).

January 1997