On Being Arrested in Rockdale, Texas

Author's Note #1: There are many different ways to tell an exciting story.

Author's Note #2: This is not an exciting story.

Part One

The bachelor and I had left Brenham after stopping in a gas station/bbq stand for some brisket sandwiches and a Shiner Bock apiece. The bachelor in question, whose valedictory party as a single man lay ahead of us in Austin, had never been to real Texas. Brenham was the (regionally) famously home of Blue Bell Homemade Ice Cream and was hospitable enough although we skipped the ice cream factory for gastrointestinal considerations, the embodiment of Texas courtesy considering the car ride (and the unforeseen ordeal) ahead.

And so we had driven up on 290, the scenic route from Houston, to see as much of the terrain as we could before settling into Austin for a bacchanal of Tex-Mex breakfasts, live music, pontoon boats, akimbo-armed strippers, Mt. Bonnell fish picnics, and deck grill-outs. Flanked by points of interest-- the bulls, moo-cows, erect donkey dongs, beef jerky stands, and, perhaps, the long-awaited wildflowers of spring, the journey had been a fortuitous one until we left Brenham, unwittingly taking the wrong road out of town.

During the ill-fated stretch of the trek, I set the hex. I finally confessed to the bachelor that I was driving without a license. NOW...before the reader gets all judgy, I'd like to elucidate that the onus of blame did not fall entirely on me. And that there were four instances where I had been failed by local government.

#1: Having arrived at the Brooklyn DMV last summer, I waded through a two-hour line of yobs, cell-phone shouters, and Hasids to be told that my STILL VALID Texas driver's license, proof of NY residency, and NEWLY ISSUED U.S. passport weren't sufficient points of identification to receive a NYS license. I did not offer to show my secret birthmark or the neck where a collar of foreskin once sat, but I certainly thought about it.

#2.: Having arrived at the Brooklyn DMV last autumn with Social Security card, birth certificate, Texas license, proof of residence, passport, AAA card, and a forged report declaring me 100% STD-free in hand, I endured a two-hour line of mouth-breathers, pregnant teenagers, and preening stroller-rollers to be told that the DMV was short-staffed and they wouldn't be processing any more licenses past a certain point in the line. I did not make the cut. In fact, the line had moved so slow, I had the opportunity to photograph a heroin addict passing out on his feet in the line numerous times.

Tom Waits lyric that never was:
Don't you know/you don't need a license/to ride the horse?

(Following a winter interlude in which my wallet was lost/stolen, thus robbing me of the out-of-state license needed to procure a new one in New York, I would now have to wait till I physically went back to Texas to get a new license.)

#3: The day before my arrest, I arrive in Houston and, with my mother at the wheel, go directly to the DMV near William Hobby airport. At the door of the DMV, there is a paper sign explaining that computer maintenance is being done and there are only road tests today. Tomorrow, it says, the office will resume all services.

#4.: The following day, the very day of my arrest, when before picking up the bachelor from the same airport, I allow myself a two-hour window during which I can finally renew my license. I roll up to the DMV, which is still closed, its door bearing the same sign as it did the day before.

In short, I am not just an idiot, but a star-crossed idiot.

***

Part Two:

The wrong road out of Brenham ended in Milam County, where the bachelor exclaimed after checking his GPS, "HOW ARE WE STILL 90 MINUTES FROM AUSTIN?"

I wouldn't say I felt compelled to speed, but having not paid attention to our route and channeling consummate Texan obstinacy, I was hovering around the speed limit when we neared an underpass. It was the moment when I realized I should have been slowing down, the moment when I saw a cop car coming the opposite direction. I braked too late.

"I'm definitely getting pulled over."
"Are you serious?"
"He's definitely going to turn around."
"I think you're fin.."
"He's turning around."

Officer Smith, yes it was his name, flashed his lights and I pulled over. He was trim, in his 50s, looked like an ex-marine, someone who definitely walked the line.

"You know why I'm stopping ya, right?"
"Because you failed high school math?"

I didn't say that. Moreover, in more rebellious days, I actually did fail a high school math class to prove it wasn't relevant. To this day, I still send my taxes home to my mother.

Officer Smith explained that he had clocked me going 71 in a 60 (the speed limit before the underpass HAD been 70 FYI). As instructed, I handed him my insurance and as for my license, I had two options:

#1: I could tell him about my stolen wallet, the failing DMVs in Brooklyn and Houston, try to explain as convincingly as possible that I had tried to get a new license earlier that VERY AFTERNOON(!) as well as the day before, pray that he'd believe it, and pray that I could turn his small town disdain for big city bureaucracy and lawlessness in my favor and appeal to the better angels of his nature and receive clemency.

#2: I could tell him about my stolen wallet, rattle off my memorized driver's license number, pray that he might let me go, and if he ran the number, I could lie about not knowing that my driver's license had expired.

Fortune cookie that never was: When choosing option #2, always expect shitty results. (Many apologies to Officer Smith for lying and to you for such a lousy pun.)

While Officer Smith checked out the driver's license number I gave him (along with my DOB and SSN), the bachelor began upbraiding me for being an idiot (no credit given for being star-crossed) and I assured him that if I was to be arrested, he was free to drive my car up to the party without me. Officer Smith returned.

"Did you know your license was expired?"
"No sir! I had no idea!"
"Well, it is."
"Are you sure?"
"Yup."
"I am so sorry officer! I thought it expired on my 30th birthday. The thing is, I don't live in Texas anymore and I never drive because I live in a big city (NOT mentioning that it was New York), and I didn't realize it!"
"Well, the bad news is I'm going to have to arrest you. The good news is that if you pay an appearance bond, which is $201 in cash, I can let you go. But you're gonna have to come with me now."

At this point, the bachelor and I both instantly assume that he is asking for a bribe. He motions for me to get out of the car. This is the Deliverance moment. In my head, the sound of banjos begin to strum.

"You carryin' any guns, knives, grenades, bazookas on you?"
"No sir."

Without frisking me, handcuffing me, or reading me my rights, Officer Smith leads me to the cop car and opens the back door. I get in while he explains that he's going to search my car. Officer Smith's partner has arrived and joins the bachelor back at my car.

"You got anything I need to know about in there, a half-pound of weed or somethin'?"

It should be noted that probably for the first time ever in my (increasingly rare) vehicular endeavors in Texas this century, I did NOT have any weed on me. Also, at this point, I am affecting a serious fake Texas accent which, under the circumstances, I'm confident sounded at least 64% authentic.

"No sir, my buddy in the car works for the g'vernment in DC (which WAS true [until somewhat recently]...), we're not messin' around out here."

Officer Smith finishes his paperwork in the front and exits the cruiser, conducts an illegal search of my vehicle. While I sit in the back of the car trying in futility to buckle my seatbelt (lest I offend him any more than I already have), the bachelor shoots me daggers from the front of my car. Not only is the totality of this delay still uncertain, he also secretly suspects I may have something illicit in the car.

The car comes up clean, I say a small shecheyanu for the disintegration of any five-year-old weed and the bachelor drives my car to the town bank to get the bail money. Officer Smith and I ride to the station. On the way, he asks me what I'm doing in town. I tell him I'm headed to Austin for my buddy's bachelor party.

"I been married five times. You gonna tell him not to do it?"
"I hear that."

It's 2011, I am almost 30 years old, yet I am in the back of a police car in Rockdale, Texas, heading to jail for driving without a license that wouldn't have been valid even if I had it with me, and I've just now said 'I hear that' to ingratiate myself to my arresting officer. Here is the point where Rockdale meets Rock Bottom.

Officer Smith loosens up. Tells me about his time in DFW where he was a cop for 16 years and saw it all. He's been in Rockdale for four. Though it's a small town, he deals with drugs, counterfeit bills, and domestic violence. He's even been shot at.

I realize that though he didn't cuff me or read me my rights, it wasn't because he was sloppy, it was because he was kind. Texas kind, duty-bound and decent. Kind in the way a doctor is when he whacks you in the moment following your birth. Fer yr own good.

Officer Smith was also a straight arrow. He had to take me to jail but didn't really want to, not because he was soft, but because it was a hassle. I had either been polite enough or pathetic enough to neutralize any sense of being a threat and for that he had been hospitable. He joked some more about his ex-wives. I cautiously joked back.

He asked me what time I was supposed to get to Austin. I told him we were having dinner at 7:30. It was just about 6:15 then. He told me that if we hurried, we wouldn't be too late. I told him that hurryin's what got me in trouble in the first place. He said, you can hurry all you want, just don't do it in Rockdale. For the second time in ten minutes, I said those words: I hear that.

I dedicate this story to Officer Smith: The kind of police that looks down on his younger partner for drinking Red Bull and smoking cigarettes on the job, the kind of police that had a copy of Law Enforcement Magazine sitting on his desk at the RPD. He was the kind that cursed about being left-handed as he wrote my name on a dry-erase board for my mugshot. And when I said I'm a southpaw too, I can't write on a chalkboard to save my life, Officer Smith was the kind of guy who shut me up by saying how 'bout trying to draw a gun out of right-handed holster?

He was also the kind of guy who, after your bond was paid, didn't object if you asked to take a picture with him.

And in that picture, he would still--true to form--put his left hand on his right holster, then shake your hand, and let you go.

***

After 45 minutes in Rockdale, I got back into my car, this time on the passenger side. As he started up the car I told the bachelor, Well you wanted to see real Texas. You got it.

The moral of the story: always stop for ice cream in Brenham.