Out Past Curfew

When I was a teenager, the town we lived in had a ten o’clock curfew. No one under eighteen could be out past ten. And yes, they did enforce it. And they didn’t offer much leniency. One of my friends received a citation for working on his dad’s car one night—because it was on the street and that meant he wasn’t in his yard. And his dad was there! Even going to or from a job was not a legitimate excuse for breaking curfew.

As you may know, I was never good with restrictions, especially stupid ones, so this type of insanity was bound to create problems. When I asked my dad what I should do if I “had” to be out past ten, (hypothetically, of course) he gave me some wise advice: “Don’t get caught, I guess.”

At the time, I had a job working at a grocery store and sometimes didn’t get off until ten or later, which played right into my recalcitrant nature. Usually, I walked the few blocks to the house and most nights I made it without any problem. But there were a few occasions when I had to elude a police car or two.

One particular night, I wasn’t paying attention and didn’t notice the cop until he pulled alongside the curb. Before he had a chance to get out, I took off. Still a couple of blocks from my house, I ran up the nearest driveway, crossed through a row of bushes, and then cut through the neighbors’ yards until I reached my house.

Figuring I’d lost the cop, I calmly walked around to the front door (the only door my key fit). And surprise, there was the cop parked right in front of my house. Thinking I had been caught, I expected the car door to open at any second but I kept heading for my front door. Only after I’d unlocked the door did I look at the cop car again—and in the streetlight, noticed it was empty. Then, just as I was closing the door, I saw the officer come around the corner of my house. Apparently, he’d circled the block and not seeing me, had gotten out to search on foot.

Not able to resist having a little fun, I turned on the porch light, noisily opened the door, and stuck my head out. “Can I help you?” I asked.

I think he probably knew I was the guy he’d been chasing but there must have been at least a little doubt in his mind. With a perplexed frown, he asked if I’d seen anybody outside my house in the last few minutes.

I shrugged and said, “You.”

Nodding slowly, the cop said okay and after giving me a long stare headed to his car.

Smirking to myself, I closed the door, just as my dad came into the living room wanting to know what was going on. “Cops are looking for someone,” I told him. “They wanted to know if I’d seen anybody outside just now.”

“You were just outside,” my dad said with a look that said he knew I was up to something.

“Yep.”

I saw him look at the clock, so I’m pretty sure he figured out what was going on. But he didn’t ask any more questions so I didn’t offer any other explanation. However, I was fully prepared to tell him I was just following his advice when he’d said, “Don’t get caught.” ~

Bruce A. Borders is the author of more than a dozen books, including: Inside Room 913, Over My Dead Body, The Journey, Miscarriage Of Justice, The Lana Denae Mysteries, and The Wynn Garrett Series. Available in ebook at www.amazon.com/Bruce-A.-Borders/e/B006SOLWQS and paperback on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million. Bruce A. Borders is a proud member of Rave Reviews Book Club.

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Road Signs

I saw the sign. In fact, I saw all the signs. Speed Zone Ahead. Reduced Speed Ahead. Construction Zone. 50 MPH. And, although it irks me to no end to slow down, I did.

And apparently, I was the only one on the road that day who could read. No one else was the least bit fazed by the signs. I don’t even think most of them turned off their cruise. Me, I don’t like tickets.

As they all went zooming past, some frowned at me, some honked, others gave me wild hand gestures—at least one finger, anyway—and a few felt compelled to yell what I assume were obscenities—it’s nearly impossible to hear anything in a truck so I can’t be sure.

I did hear the sirens though, and saw the flashing lights coming up from behind. And then brake lights ahead.

My first thought was, “There’s no way the cops can pull over all of them.” (There must have been twenty or more vehicles). Then I realized the cops weren’t after the speeding motorists. They were on their way to the wreck. The wreck that blocked the road ahead of me.

Well, seeing that, I immediately took the exit. The exit that had evidently been built just for my convenience, and also the exit everyone in front of me had already passed. I drove alongside the freeway for a few blocks, and then got back on—bypassing the wreck in the process.

As for all those people in a hurry, the ones who passed me, well, they got to observe a crash site response first hand! I heard from other drivers that the show lasted about an hour before the police finally decided to let the traffic stuck behind the wreck turn around and go back to the exit. The drivers said I was really lucky I’d missed it.

Lucky? Really? Nope. All the signs were there. And I do know how to read! ~

Bruce A. Borders is the author of more than a dozen books, including: Inside Room 913, Over My Dead Body, The Journey, Miscarriage Of Justice, and The Wynn Garrett Series. Available in ebook and paperback on iTunes, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords, or at www.bruceabordersbooks.weebly.com. Amazon Profile - http://www.amazon.com/Bruce-A.-Borders/e/B006SOLWQS. Bruce A. Borders is a proud member of Rave Reviews Book Club.

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Not So Bright

Night time driving. In the semi-truck. Cruising along, minding my own business. Everything was going great. Until... Until I see the red and blue lights come on behind me.

I knew why the cop was pulling me over - the truck I was driving had only one headlight working. Now by law, I’m supposed to carry a spare headlight but I didn’t have one. The company I drove for at the time had no use for that particular law so they didn’t provide spare headlights. They reason, they said, was that the drivers would steal them. We all knew they were just being cheap, but it always sounds better to blame it on the drivers. What it really said was they didn’t trust their drivers with a twenty dollar light, yet they gave them a quarter million dollar truck to drive. Yeah, that makes sense.

In the interest of full disclosure, even had I been carrying an extra headlight, I wouldn’t have changed it. Not that night anyway, since it was raining cows and horses (that’s a lot like raining cats and dogs but heavier). I didn’t feel like getting soaked.

After enduring a short lecture about how dangerous driving with one headlight can be - apparently, the other light just waits for that very moment to go out as well - I was ordered to change it before the truck moved again. The cop scribbled some notes in his handy dandy notebook and left.

I knew he’d be waiting down the road somewhere. I also knew I didn’t have another headlight. That wasn’t a problem for long. Bracing myself for the drenching rain, I got out and removed both headlights, putting them back in on the opposite side. Then climbing back into the truck, I headed on my merry way - still with just one headlight.

Sure enough, I’d only gone about fifty miles when once more I was being invited to pull to the side of the road. The same cop came to the door and seeing it was me said, “Didn’t I tell you to change that headlight before you took off again?”

“Yeah. And I did change it.” I didn’t mention exactly what the change consisted of in this instance.

The officer could see that I was soaked but still he gave me a dubious look like he didn’t believe me. Checking his notebook, the trooper slowly nodded his head. “It was the other side that was out.” Then, again assuming his arrogant and condescending tone he said, “That’s why it’s important to change those right away. You just never know when the other side will go out and you’d be driving blind.”

“I see that,” I said, resisting the urge to comment on how brilliant he was. 

“Don’t suppose you have another extra light with you now, do you?”

I shook my head. “Nope. But I’ll be to the terminal in about twenty-five miles.”

“Well, all right,” he said. “Make sure they replace it when you get there. And be careful, driving with a single headlight is dangerous.”

No kidding! It had already gotten me pulled over twice!

Bruce A. Borders is the author of more than a dozen books. Inside Room 913, Over My Dead Body, The Journey, and Miscarriage Of Justice, and other titles, are available as ebooks on Apple I-Pad®, Amazon Kindle®, Barnes & Noble Nook® and Sony Reader®, Kobo, Diesel Books, and Smashwords. His books are also available in paperback at most online retailers or at www.bruceabordersbooks.weebly.com. The popular Wynn Garrett Series Books are now available on Barnes And Noble® at http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/?series_id=867526 See Bruce’s Smashwords Profile at www.smashwords.com/profile/view/BruceABorders?ref=BruceABorders  #BruceABorders

Back To School

Normally, you wouldn’t think the first day of going back to school would involve the police. But, of course, I’m not exactly normal. This wasn’t due to a fight, or drugs, or anything mischievous. I did nothing against school rules at all. In fact, I didn’t even have a chance to actually make it to school.

Usually, I rode my bike, but due to my bicycle having a severe addiction to flat tires, this day, I was walking. We lived about three miles from the school - if I took the city roads. So instead, I chose the freeway, which cut it down to under two miles. Just my luck, a state cop happened by. He wasn’t all that excited about seeing a teenager strolling down the shoulder of the highway, and felt it necessary to tell me so. My choice was a poor decision, he said. Apparently, I was in great danger of being ran over.

Well, I wasn’t all that excited about seeing him either. And, I “politely” informed him that the only one who had even come close to hitting me was the guy driving the car with flashing lights. Needless to say, I didn’t score any points with him. He seemed to think I should find a different route. And, he said if he saw me walking to school on the freeway again, I’d be in trouble.

He left and I continued on to school - on the freeway, of course.

At the end of the school day, I set out for home. Being stubborn, as I was, (still am) I again headed down the freeway. And again, the same cop pulled up behind me, lights flashing. I guess he’d been waiting for me.

“Didn’t I tell you I didn’t want to see you walking on the freeway again?”

“Actually, what you said was if you saw me walking to school, I’d be in trouble,” I told him. “I’m walking home now.”

Rolling his eyes, he shook his head. Maybe he was thinking how stupid I was, I don’t know, but I saw a brief flicker of a smile come across his face. “Just get home and don’t walk on the freeway anymore,” he said, getting back into his car.

Surprisingly, I listened. Well, at least until my bike suffered another bout with it’s addiction.

Bruce A. Borders is the author of more than a dozen books. Over My Dead Body, The Journey, and Miscarriage Of Justice, and other titles, are available as ebooks on Apple I-Pad®, Amazon Kindle®, Barnes & Noble Nook® and Sony Reader®, Kobo, Diesel Books, and Smashwords. His books are also available in print at most online retailers or at www.bruceabordersbooks.weebly.com. The popular Wynn Garrett Series Books are now available on Barnes And Noble® at http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/?series_id=867526 See Bruce’s Smashwords Profile at www.smashwords.com/profile/view/BruceABorders #MiscarriageOfJustice #BruceABorders

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, the saying goes. You do something nice for someone and inevitably, something will happen to make you wish you had just ignored them. Or, at the very least, make you wonder why you were so quick to help.

This is evident in the small things as well as bigger things in life. For instance: I’m sure everyone has, at some point, stopped to let a car out of a parking lot onto a busy road. Then, almost without fail, at the next light, they’ll go sailing right on through - as the light turns to red and there you’ll sit. That’s a small thing.

An example of something bigger would be the following scenario.

A neighbor lady shows up on your doorstep in the middle of the night, terrified and screaming that her husband is trying to kill her. You can hear the husband shouting and then you see him waving a gun around through the window of his house. The woman begs you to let her in and asks you to call the cops. Of course, you do. Good deed, right? Sure, except by the time the police arrive, she has decided she wants to go home. She tells the officers that none of what you told them on the phone is true and she has no idea what you are talking about. Now the cops are looking at you like you made it all up. (Yes, this actually happened to me). Another lesson in the maxim No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.

The point is, if you help someone you may well end up being blamed for anything that goes wrong. I should know this by now and should have learned to just say no to doing good deeds. I don’t mean to give the impression that I’m some noble guy who goes out of his way to help people. I’m not. But human nature dictates certain responses and behavior. If someone is following close behind as you enter a store, you naturally hold the door for them, right? To let it slam in their face would just be rude. So, I have not learned to just say no.

Which is why a few minutes after pulling a large amount of paper towels out of a guy’s throat, and getting him breathing again, I found myself locked outside the car, on a deserted road, at night, with that same guy brandishing a knife, threatening to kill me. He said he had been trying to make a “statement,” and that I had interfered in his life. Uh, sure, if by interfering he meant prolonging it then I guess I’m guilty.

As you can obviously deduce, he did not kill me. And no, I didn’t kill him either. However, I did manage to get the knife away from him! And eventually, he calmed down - about the time the state police showed up on the scene. Although, not before telling the officer that I had “stolen” his knife. Really?

I did give the knife back - a few days later, very mindful of the fact that No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.

Bruce A. Borders is the author of more than a dozen books. Over My Dead Body, The Journey, and Miscarriage Of Justice, and other titles, are available as ebooks on Apple I-Pad®, Amazon Kindle®, Barnes & Noble Nook® and Sony Reader®, Kobo, Diesel Books, and Smashwords. His books are also available in print at most online retailers or at www.bruceabordersbooks.weebly.com. The popular Wynn Garrett Series Books are now available on Barnes And Noble® at http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/?series_id=867526 See Bruce’s Smashwords Profile at www.smashwords.com/profile/view/BruceABorders #MiscarriageOfJustice #BruceABorders

The Broken Window

Has anyone besides me ever gotten into trouble for something you didn’t do? Probably. But for me, it seemed to be a habit because it happened a lot - still does from time to time. Just recently, I was blamed for tearing a hose off the fuel pump at my job - until they actually looked at the surveillance camera footage and saw it wasn’t me. (Would have been nice if they had checked that first). When I was a kid it wasn’t always that easy to prove my innocence but usually, I did find a way to get out of things without suffering any ill consequences, as in the following story.

I was nine or ten years old at the time. An apartment building was being built across the alley from my house. A neighbor friend of mine and I loved to ride our bikes in the piles of dirt. One day, when we’d stopped for a rest, I picked up a dirt clod and threw it through one of the open windows. No glass had been installed yet and we didn’t see any harm in tossing a few more dirt clods through the window hole. A little more dirt on the dirt floor inside couldn’t hurt anything.

We soon grew tired of throwing dirt and went back to riding our bikes. That might have been the end of it except some other kids had seen us and decided throwing dirt clods looked like fun. For the next few days the other kids took it upon themselves to move as much dirt from outside the apartments to the inside, one dirt clod at a time. Then one day, when we all got home from school, the windows had been installed. Of course that fact didn’t at all deter the neighboring kids from their fun and it wasn’t long before one of the windowpanes was broken.

Before the shattered glass had settled to the ground all of the other kids were long gone. My friend and I had done nothing wrong and so we stayed. The next day after school, we again went to ride our bikes on the mounds of dirt. And then suddenly, there were four or five men who appeared out of nowhere - and they were mad! One of them, evidently the boss, was yelling and cussing at us, asking us why we’d broken out the window. It did no good to tell him we weren’t the ones responsible, he didn’t care what we had to say. He’d talked to someone across the street and they told him we rode our bikes there everyday. We were going to have to pay for the window, he said. Then he added, that he wouldn’t call the police if we’d tell him where we lived.

I may have been only a kid but I was no fool. Remember I said getting in trouble for things I hadn’t done was sort of a habit of mine? Well, that habit had taught me at least one thing and I knew better than to tell the guy where I lived. He wanted to talk to my parents, and that wasn’t going to happen - not if I could help it! But neither did I want to lie to the man. So, my friend and I just took off riding as fast as we could - away from the construction site and in the opposite direction from our houses.

Returning home an hour or so later, we half expected to be greeted by a cop car - but there were none. Neither of our parents mentioned it so apparently, the guy hadn’t figured out where we lived. In a few weeks the apartments were finished and we never saw the man again. For once, I had won! I wasn’t sure exactly what I had won since I hadn’t been guilty in the first place, but it was nice to feel as if I’d gotten away with something.

The whole reason I’m telling this story is that I was reminded of it the other day while driving past those apartments. I was slightly amused to see that a window was broken. The same window. Great, I thought, as my smile faded and I quickly drove away. I wonder if I’m going to be blamed for this?

Bruce A. Borders, author and songwriter, has over 500 songs and more than a dozen books. Over My Dead Body, The Journey, and Miscarriage Of Justice, his latest books, are available on Apple I-Pad®, Amazon Kindle®, Barnes & Noble Nook® and Sony Reader®, Kobo, Diesel Books, and Smashwords. Now also available in print at many online retailers or at www.bruceabordersbooks.weebly.com. The popular Wynn Garrett Series Books are now available on Barnes And Noble® at http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/?series_id=867526 See Bruce’s Smashwords Profile at www.smashwords.com/profile/view/BruceABorders

High Crime Area

I may have to move. The town where I live is trying its best to become a big city, and not just through a population growth. It seems the crime rate is also rising.

About a month ago, I arrived home from work one morning at my usual time, approximately five a.m. Turning onto my street, I was greeted by a scene of flashing lights from no less than a half dozen police cars. Crime scene tape was stretched across the road just on the other side of my house.

My first thought was, “They better let me into my drive!” After working all night, driving 715 miles, the last thing I wanted to do was argue with the cops about whether I’m allowed to go home or not.

Weaving my way through the cop cars, which were parked haphazardly on the street, I was able to maneuver my pickup into the driveway. No officers said anything, although I did get quite a few long stares.

Waking my wife, I asked what had happened, but she didn’t know. Whatever it was, she had slept through it. It took a couple of hours to find out exactly what she’d slept through. Apparently, our neighbor lady, two houses up, had shot her husband and then herself. He lived. She didn’t. My wife must be a fairly sound sleeper. Crime scene investigators were on the scene until late that afternoon.

Since that day, there has been a wave of violent crimes including, another domestic shooting death, two men beaten to death on the street – on separate occasions, and most recently, local police officers shot and killed a man who tried to attack them with a knife.

That’s an awful lot of crime fatalities for a relatively small community in one month. We’ve had more than our share it would seem. But hopefully, things will settle down for a while now. I never intended to live in a high crime area!

Okay, I’m not really thinking of moving. I know there are nut jobs committing violent crime everywhere. Moving wouldn’t change that. Besides, if I even considered the possibility of moving, my grandkids would probably kill me!

Bruce A. Borders, author and songwriter has over 500 songs and more than a dozen books. Over My Dead Body, The Journey, and Miscarriage Of Justice, his latest books, are available on Apple I-Pad®, Amazon Kindle®, Barnes & Noble Nook® and Sony Reader®, Kobo, Diesel Books, and Smashwords. For more information, visit www.bruceaborders.com. See Bruce’s Amazon Author Page at www.amazon.com/author/bruceaborders or view his Smashwords Profile at www.smashwords.com/profile/view/BruceABorders