Saturday, June 6, 2009

Welcome to Georgia, we count by Mississippi's

I was going down a rural Georgia road in the dark and passed a sign among the trees lining the road that said, " speed checked by detection devices." I thought that this tiny road, with little red-clay dirt roads branching off periodically in the middle of nowhere, couldn't possibly have some sophisticated speed monitoring and ticketing system. This, of course, led to wondering how they monitored speed. I pictured a 70's Dodge cruiser, with a huge row of lights mounted on top of it, backed into the brush behind the Waffle House sign, Cletus looking intently down the road at on coming traffic. When I inevitably get pulled over, this is what would ensue:

"Can I help you officer?"
"Not likely (head turns slightly and a stream of brown tobacco spittle hits the red clay), what you can do is keep that there Yankee trap shut."
"Okay...but what makes me a Yankee?"
"You ain't from these parts are you?"
"No."
"That's it."
"That's what?"
'"Look around you boy, you don't want to start nothin'...you seen Deliverance?"
"Enough said Sir. How fast was I going?"
"I had you at two Mississippi between that ole Church and the Waffle house sign."
"Two Mississippi?"
"Yes, most folks are three to four Mississippi through there...you were really screamin' along."

Later, at the hearing:

"Your honor, my client pleads innocent to the charge of reduced Mississippi's over a given distance."
"Cletus, were you hanging out by the Waffle house sign again?"
"Yes your honor, and I had him at two Mississippi," all said through remnants of brown spittle at the corners of his mouth, " and most folks are three to four Mississippi through there."
"Now that's right Cletus, 'cause you had me at four Mississippi through there just last week," the judge eyed me over the top of her reading glasses.
"Your honor, while my client may be guilty of going one or two Mississippi's over the speed limit, in his defense, he thought the basis for speed evaluation was Georgia's, and you can see that that eliminates two syllables per unit, putting him well within the three to four Mississippi range when swapped one for one in the counting process."
"Well Cletus, was the basis clearly posted?"
"Uh, your honor...uh, uh..."
"Case dismissed!"
"Don't let me see you around these parts again Yankee boy; your silver-tongued lawyer won't help you next time," Cletus was not happy to have been hood-winked by my cousin Vinny.

"You've got a little something on the corners of your mouth," I told Cletus, "Oh, it's just dried tobacco spit."

"This is just like with them Duke boys....." the defeated deputy's grumbling trails off as he heads for the cruiser with the row of huge lights on top of it.

Georgia is, of course, completely caught up with the times, and they use powerful Dodge Chargers with low profile LED light strips on top of them. They rarely use tobacco in uniform, and they abandoned the "Mississippi" system long ago.

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