On Tuesday, Troy and I helped cousin Dale Westbrook go pick up furniture for his mother.
The new couches were in Wichita, so Troy and Dale picked me up in Moundridge and we hopped onto the interstate.
Just as we were about to pull into Hesston to talk to Dale’s mother, who manages the AmericInn, a highway patrol office pulled us over.
Dale was a bit puzzled by this because for once we weren’t speeding since we were towing a trailer behind his truck in order to get the furniture home.
The officer walked up to the vehicle and asked for the normal items such as proof of insurance and Dale’s driver’s license.
Since it is a regular-cab truck, the three of us were crammed in there like sardines, though we were legal because we each had a seatbelt.
Dale isn’t a small fellow. He is quite tall, so he asked the officer if he could get out to get his driver’s license out of his pocket.
The office obliged the request, though he stood with his hand ready at his firearm in case Dale did anything crazy.
Once the office had Dale’s license in hand, he still needed the insurance, which wasn’t in the glove box.
Eventually we found it behind the seat.
I wasn’t sure how it got there, and I quite honestly don’t want to know either.
The officer then took everything back to his car, and the three of us began talking and cracking jokes.
I said I thought I could make a run for it by dashing down the ditch and hopping the fence surrounding the interstate-adjacent residential area in Hesston.
We all thought that was hilarious, especially picturing me trying to get my husky self over the fence.
When the officer came back up the truck, he heard us laughing.
“What’s so funny?” he asked. “I don’t think it is funny when I get pulled over.”
We all just looked at him and Dale explained that I had told a joke we all found particularly amusing.
Dale ended up getting a ticket for not having his trailer’s safety chains attached to the bumper of the truck.
He hooked them up and we continued to Wichita without incident and having learned a valuable lesson: don’t let an officer catch you laughing if you get pulled over.
Of course, I would like to report that we made it back from Wichita without any problems, but then I would be lying.
When we were four-and-a-half miles south of Canton, one of the truck tires blew out.
We changed the tire on the side of the road. Dale and Troy did good work on fixing the blowing tire, and I practiced my supervisor skills.
We did eventually get the furniture to Dale’s parents’ house.
The moral of that story is simple: if you are going to have car troubles on the side of the road, it is nice to have couches to sit on while you wait for the problem to be resolved.
