the land of :
“Hell yeah!
We know how
to do stupid!”
By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)
Over the years I’ve been called out by various Moristotle readers and writers because the stories I claim as factual accounts sometimes seem so far-fetched, people assume I must be embellishing, à la Hunter Thompson…or Fox “News.” When I try to explain that these stories are simply examples of the idiocy that swirled around me as I grew up in Southwest Virginia, and that I rediscovered when I moved back from the Northern Virginia/Washington DC area to SWVA, few seem to believe me.
“How could such stupidity and absurdity possibly be real?” people ask.
That’s an easy matter to question if you grew up in some progressive part of the country and maybe even went to some vaunted Ivy League school, but for those of us who grew up dealing with people who still think professional wrestling is legit, and still believe Andy of Mayberry was a documentary of bucolic life in the next holler down the road (excuse me, next hollow down the road) -- well, for those people, the more ridiculous the story, the more likely they are to believe it. And sadly, around here, the story is likely to be true.
“Man dies in outhouse after knife fight on Loser Lane.” If most of you read that headline, you would just know it had to be some sort of click-bait scam. But when I read it, I thought, “sounds reasonable. I mean, if you grew up on Loser Lane, why would you not expect to die in an outhouse after a knife fight?” And guess what, that was an actual headline from a news story a couple of decades ago, and Loser Lane (since mercifully renamed) was at most a 30-mile drive from my front door. Not that I ever made the drive to actually see Loser Lane, but, yeah, it was there and the guy who won the knife fight and didn’t die in an outhouse is, I think, still in prison. I hope so, at least, because that may be a better fate than being back home on the former Loser Lane.
Let me digress into some social implications of a road name such as Loser Lane, and what it says about a region that would endorse such. Firstly, that was a name chosen by someone who lived on that road when our 911 system was created, and every route number had to be given a street name. Think of it, someone thought it was a great idea to call the street they lived on Loser Lane. And some bureaucrat with the power to stop such foolishness abandoned their post and let the name become official. And thus kids grew up having to tell others they lived on Loser Lane. This is just a guess, but I’m betting the number of Loser Lane kids who go on to lead inspired lives is significantly lower than those who grow up on King Street, for example, or Apple Orchard Hill. But such is the place I grew up that many people who live here, and people with the authority to stop them, think Loser Lane is a perfectly acceptable name to give a street. Which gives insight as to why the craziness you outsiders might see as embellished is just the facts, as some TV cop used to say.
Which brings me back to: A man walked into a convenience store. This story is factual, and I’m going to embed a link to the actual news story that verifies it just so people won’t accuse me of making it up. On the one hand, this story is no big deal; on the other, it perfectly illustrates the sort of stupid I grew up surrounded by, and that I have discovered still exists here half a century later.
This bit of drama unfolded on September 9, 2021. It kicked off at 2:25 p.m. when a man walked into a convenience store in a small town 18.6 miles from where I live. He picked up a couple of items and walked to his car – without paying. A store clerk dutifully followed the man and confronted him. The man waved a gun and told the clerk to go back inside. At that moment, the clerk made the only smart decision that emerges from any of the ensuing mess: he went back inside.
The man drove away, and the clerk, with an opportunity to stay on the smart side of the equation, instead called the police. Why this was a very questionable decision I will reveal later, but this is a not an untypical example of what frequently happens in the land of “Hell yeah! We know how to do stupid!”
This being such a major crime, police in all surrounding counties were notified to be on the lookout for the getaway car. And sure enough, a few hours later an officer on patrol in a small city a few miles away spotted the vehicle. When he tried to stop the car, the suspect again “brandished a gun” and drove off.
Which led to a chase that featured shots fired and very dangerous driving at interstate speeds. It ultimately involved law enforcement agencies from several localities and the Virginia State Police. The chase happened to be coming toward an interstate interchange as my son and I were accessing that interchange slightly ahead of the chase, having just spent two hours at our favorite local park.
If you are standing on a beach and see a freak gigantic wave forming, you have two choices: stand in awe, or run. When you access an unexplainably traffic-free interstate and look in your rearview mirror and see some sort of unknown chaos hurtling toward you, well, you likewise have two choices: let it overtake you and risk whatever comes with it, or run. In this case, my “if they can’t catch me they can’t hit me” motorcycling instincts kick in and the answer is clear and logical: Warp Speed, Mr. Spock.
A disclaimer here: I’ve driven more than 1.5 million miles without a wreck or even a speeding ticket; I’m not some hell-on-wheels nut case. I’m also trained for driving high speeds and have driven faster than 180 mph in several different cars. Most relevant to my current situation, since I’m retired and now drive 5,000 miles/year – instead of my former 50K miles/year – I quit worrying about high fuel mileage and now drive what I want to drive. Which is a ubiquitous silver Mercedes sedan that happens to be capable of 200 mph; it is called a “sleeper” in gearhead terms.
Having accessed the interstate, The Wraith – yes, cliche, I know – is already at 60mph when I hit the throttle. The tachometer instantly screams toward 6,000 rpms and the digital speedometer quickly flickers through numbers I will not admit to here. When I again glance in the rearview mirror I realize we are not only staying ahead of the “high speed chase” we are quickly pulling away from it. And then, sadly, I realize the chase is taking an exit behind us, and I have no excuse for staying at warp speed. Begrudgingly I ease off the throttle: Stand down, Mr. Spock.
The excitement is over for our drive home, but it would just be starting if we had gone through town instead of taking the interstate. The chase goes down our 35mph Main Street, with more high speeds and gunshots along the way, takes a turn toward a quiet high-end subdivision where my oldest sister happens to live, and finally ends when the suspect’s vehicle wrecks. The injured suspect is taken to the hospital and – miraculously – despite high speeds and gunshots, no one else has been injured.
Now for the punchline: What was stolen that made all this a priority to law enforcement and necessitated such a dangerous undertaking as a high-speed chase with gunfire? A bag of chips and a soft drink.
Yes, any number of people could have been injured or killed because a guy stole a bag of chips and a soft drink. Ponder that. Firstly, what sort of idiot blatantly steals a bag of chips and a soft drink in the middle of the afternoon, and then flashes a handgun so he can drive away with his booty? Secondly, if the car has been identified and the license plate number presumably recorded, who at the law enforcement level decides this is a matter worthy of putting countless lives at risk? And while I’m at it, with all the computer controls and trackers on vehicles these days, why isn’t there some sort of master “kill switch” that would allow law enforcement to simply push a button to disable a vehicle instead of chasing it?
For those of you who find stories such as this difficult to imagine, even here in the land of “Hell yeah! We know how to do stupid!” here’s a link to a news account of this story: “Police chase that started in Montgomery County ends with crash in Salem.”
By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)
Over the years I’ve been called out by various Moristotle readers and writers because the stories I claim as factual accounts sometimes seem so far-fetched, people assume I must be embellishing, à la Hunter Thompson…or Fox “News.” When I try to explain that these stories are simply examples of the idiocy that swirled around me as I grew up in Southwest Virginia, and that I rediscovered when I moved back from the Northern Virginia/Washington DC area to SWVA, few seem to believe me.
“How could such stupidity and absurdity possibly be real?” people ask.
That’s an easy matter to question if you grew up in some progressive part of the country and maybe even went to some vaunted Ivy League school, but for those of us who grew up dealing with people who still think professional wrestling is legit, and still believe Andy of Mayberry was a documentary of bucolic life in the next holler down the road (excuse me, next hollow down the road) -- well, for those people, the more ridiculous the story, the more likely they are to believe it. And sadly, around here, the story is likely to be true.
“Man dies in outhouse after knife fight on Loser Lane.” If most of you read that headline, you would just know it had to be some sort of click-bait scam. But when I read it, I thought, “sounds reasonable. I mean, if you grew up on Loser Lane, why would you not expect to die in an outhouse after a knife fight?” And guess what, that was an actual headline from a news story a couple of decades ago, and Loser Lane (since mercifully renamed) was at most a 30-mile drive from my front door. Not that I ever made the drive to actually see Loser Lane, but, yeah, it was there and the guy who won the knife fight and didn’t die in an outhouse is, I think, still in prison. I hope so, at least, because that may be a better fate than being back home on the former Loser Lane.
Let me digress into some social implications of a road name such as Loser Lane, and what it says about a region that would endorse such. Firstly, that was a name chosen by someone who lived on that road when our 911 system was created, and every route number had to be given a street name. Think of it, someone thought it was a great idea to call the street they lived on Loser Lane. And some bureaucrat with the power to stop such foolishness abandoned their post and let the name become official. And thus kids grew up having to tell others they lived on Loser Lane. This is just a guess, but I’m betting the number of Loser Lane kids who go on to lead inspired lives is significantly lower than those who grow up on King Street, for example, or Apple Orchard Hill. But such is the place I grew up that many people who live here, and people with the authority to stop them, think Loser Lane is a perfectly acceptable name to give a street. Which gives insight as to why the craziness you outsiders might see as embellished is just the facts, as some TV cop used to say.
Which brings me back to: A man walked into a convenience store. This story is factual, and I’m going to embed a link to the actual news story that verifies it just so people won’t accuse me of making it up. On the one hand, this story is no big deal; on the other, it perfectly illustrates the sort of stupid I grew up surrounded by, and that I have discovered still exists here half a century later.
This bit of drama unfolded on September 9, 2021. It kicked off at 2:25 p.m. when a man walked into a convenience store in a small town 18.6 miles from where I live. He picked up a couple of items and walked to his car – without paying. A store clerk dutifully followed the man and confronted him. The man waved a gun and told the clerk to go back inside. At that moment, the clerk made the only smart decision that emerges from any of the ensuing mess: he went back inside.
The man drove away, and the clerk, with an opportunity to stay on the smart side of the equation, instead called the police. Why this was a very questionable decision I will reveal later, but this is a not an untypical example of what frequently happens in the land of “Hell yeah! We know how to do stupid!”
This being such a major crime, police in all surrounding counties were notified to be on the lookout for the getaway car. And sure enough, a few hours later an officer on patrol in a small city a few miles away spotted the vehicle. When he tried to stop the car, the suspect again “brandished a gun” and drove off.
Which led to a chase that featured shots fired and very dangerous driving at interstate speeds. It ultimately involved law enforcement agencies from several localities and the Virginia State Police. The chase happened to be coming toward an interstate interchange as my son and I were accessing that interchange slightly ahead of the chase, having just spent two hours at our favorite local park.
If you are standing on a beach and see a freak gigantic wave forming, you have two choices: stand in awe, or run. When you access an unexplainably traffic-free interstate and look in your rearview mirror and see some sort of unknown chaos hurtling toward you, well, you likewise have two choices: let it overtake you and risk whatever comes with it, or run. In this case, my “if they can’t catch me they can’t hit me” motorcycling instincts kick in and the answer is clear and logical: Warp Speed, Mr. Spock.
A disclaimer here: I’ve driven more than 1.5 million miles without a wreck or even a speeding ticket; I’m not some hell-on-wheels nut case. I’m also trained for driving high speeds and have driven faster than 180 mph in several different cars. Most relevant to my current situation, since I’m retired and now drive 5,000 miles/year – instead of my former 50K miles/year – I quit worrying about high fuel mileage and now drive what I want to drive. Which is a ubiquitous silver Mercedes sedan that happens to be capable of 200 mph; it is called a “sleeper” in gearhead terms.
Having accessed the interstate, The Wraith – yes, cliche, I know – is already at 60mph when I hit the throttle. The tachometer instantly screams toward 6,000 rpms and the digital speedometer quickly flickers through numbers I will not admit to here. When I again glance in the rearview mirror I realize we are not only staying ahead of the “high speed chase” we are quickly pulling away from it. And then, sadly, I realize the chase is taking an exit behind us, and I have no excuse for staying at warp speed. Begrudgingly I ease off the throttle: Stand down, Mr. Spock.
The excitement is over for our drive home, but it would just be starting if we had gone through town instead of taking the interstate. The chase goes down our 35mph Main Street, with more high speeds and gunshots along the way, takes a turn toward a quiet high-end subdivision where my oldest sister happens to live, and finally ends when the suspect’s vehicle wrecks. The injured suspect is taken to the hospital and – miraculously – despite high speeds and gunshots, no one else has been injured.
Now for the punchline: What was stolen that made all this a priority to law enforcement and necessitated such a dangerous undertaking as a high-speed chase with gunfire? A bag of chips and a soft drink.
Yes, any number of people could have been injured or killed because a guy stole a bag of chips and a soft drink. Ponder that. Firstly, what sort of idiot blatantly steals a bag of chips and a soft drink in the middle of the afternoon, and then flashes a handgun so he can drive away with his booty? Secondly, if the car has been identified and the license plate number presumably recorded, who at the law enforcement level decides this is a matter worthy of putting countless lives at risk? And while I’m at it, with all the computer controls and trackers on vehicles these days, why isn’t there some sort of master “kill switch” that would allow law enforcement to simply push a button to disable a vehicle instead of chasing it?
For those of you who find stories such as this difficult to imagine, even here in the land of “Hell yeah! We know how to do stupid!” here’s a link to a news account of this story: “Police chase that started in Montgomery County ends with crash in Salem.”
| Copyright © 2021 by Paul Clark |
I'm just glad the thief didn't go back and shoot the clerk! Another wonderful and beautifully written true-life tale! Thank you Paul!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Eric, for taking the time to read and comment. If only life around here could be so normal we would have to work at making up the stupid and crazy that seems to happen daily.
DeleteThanks paul, it would be funny....but, it's not. As i am fond of asserting," our phones are version 20, but, sadly, humans are version 1", never had a reboot. ah...
ReplyDeleteRemember when we had to put a boot disk in a computer to get it started, then pull the boot disk and insert a data disk to actually use the computer? Compared to other places I've lived, worked and traveled - DC, LA, NYC, Europe, etc - life here often feels like the boot disk misfired and no one knew you could reboot.
DeleteReminds me of the guy who entered a convenient store, plugged his electric saw into an outlet and threatened to cut the clerk if he didn't give him all of the money in the register.
ReplyDeleteHow does this tale end? A customer walked in, saw what was happening and unplugged the saw. The clerk and the man at the door easily held the man until the police arrived.
Funny story, Michael. Here they give him the money, give him the pack of cigarettes and the six-pack of Budweiser they assumed he was going to buy at the next store after he finished robbing the current store, and send him on his way. Then they would of course call the police so we could have yet another high-speed chase that shuts down the interstate, puts countless lives at risk and - if we are really lucky - produces a great front-page photo of the car upside down in someone's resplendent forsythia bush. That's the way we roll, as they still say here.
ReplyDeleteI can’t remember where in Indiana I ran into them, but Loser is a family name. Apparently, your neck of the woods also has a few.
ReplyDeleteIf you think that kind of stupid only happens in your neck of the woods, you've never been to south Florida! We have a saying, "Only in SoFla". Pythons in the Everglades? That's nothing. What about a series, yes I said a SERIES of people running around naked, attacking people with knives and trying to eat them! One Colombian from a marijuana grow-house chases another down the street with a machete, and 14 grow-houses get taken down as a result. Punks driving around, shooting up God knows what in their cars, and putting the needles in their behinds trying to fool the cops, who are NOT amused..."Only in SoFla!"
ReplyDelete