True Story

This is a true story that happened right here on the east side of Galesburg sometime in October. We had a bunch of black kids, friends of my son who is also black, and two of them lived over in Iowa Court, a kind of public housing area. It's back behind the new HyVee a ways but several of those kids live out that way so I was becoming familiar with the area. But after I dropped them off I went up to Knox Boulevard and realized I could get home either by turning right or turning left. In confusion I tried to pick which way to go, picked one, and went. But then I got pulled over for not using my turn signal.

The guy had me get out of the car so he could search better, and called for backup, who came pretty quickly. So I stood against one of the police cars while they turned the inside of the car over and checked every single hiding place. They also searched me pretty thoroughly.

Maybe I said something that was suspicious, but I thought it was a whole lot of hard searching just for failure to use a turn signal (it's possible I did it more than once). But the ironic thing was, I was totally clean. I said to them, I can't speak for the boys who were in the car, but if you find anything in there, it's not mine. I meant it. I was myself clean. They were about forty-five years late - if they'd have checked back then, they'd have found all kinds of things. But these days, nothing.

Actually, they couldn't believe it. No firearm? No drugs? No nothing? They were pretty sure they'd get me for something. What was. this old white guy doing down in those houses anyway. Really I was being pulled over because they didn't know who I was or what I was doing and they just wanted to run a pretty thorough check. Well, they got it. They had to admit I was clean, and they wrote me a warning and let me go. I have to say that in the end, they were polite, and outside of searching me pretty thoroughly, didn't insult me or anything.

I remember the red and blue police lights shining on me, and the feeling that I should be ashamed, having the entire southeast side seeing me standing out there up against that police car. But the fact is, I don't know a whole lot of people on the southeast side, and I don't even know a whole lot up here on the north side either. I didn't really feel ashamed, because I hadn't really done all that much wrong.

It reminded me of that old joke, the reason people in these small towns don't use their turn signals is that everyone knows where everyone is going.

I'll use them from now on, though, I promise.