If you hang around Nicholas for any significant amount of time (like five minutes!), you’ll quickly learn that he has a fascination with police cars and fire trucks. I know that boys normally would like these things but he seems somewhat obsessed with them and there isn’t a police car stealthy enough to escape his notice when he’s riding along with us. (NOTE: please make sure you ID the cops when they’re ahead of us…not behind us! 🙂
The boy must have at least ten police cars in his collection ranging from small Hot Wheels to mid-sized die-cast cars with operating doors, to a big monstronsity that will belt out M.C. Hammer’s Can’t Touch This when you fiddle with the oversized engine.
For the longest time he’d refer to any police vehicles as a police truck, even though most of them were actual cars. It wasn’t until we were in Washington, D.C. for Alexander’s surgery that he called out police truck from the back seat and lo and behold, it was an actual police truck!
We occasionally watch World’s Wildest Police Videos and the boy certainly has an appreciation for a beautifully executed PIT move (pursuit intervention technique, i.e. the patrol car noses the suspect’s vehicle in the rear quarter panel to hopefully spin and stall the suspect vehicle to effect capture). Come on, admit it…the show is a guilty pleasure of high-speed pursuits and spectacular crashes and Sheriff John Bunnell’s blinding flashes of the obvious about drug crazed maniacs behind the wheel was enough to inspire it’s own drinking game. He first appeared (with his vice unit) on COPS in 1989-1990 (if you’ve ever seen the show, you couldn’t help but notice this guy…impossibly white teeth in a constant grin and impeccably coiffed hair even after taking down a perpetrator and he’s got a terminal case of sarcasm). The guy is an absolute hoot! He spent over 25 years in the Multnomah County (Portland, Oregon) sheriff’s office, was promoted to sheriff when his predecessor resigned early, and then lost the next election to a long-time Portland cop. Total time as sheriff…seven months! But he seems to have done OK with hosting law enforcement shows… 🙂
If the boy decides to join whatever local constabulary happens to serve the area in which we’re living in the future, it really shouldn’t come as a surprise!
I’m sure you’re wondering what in the world this has to do with anything relevant to this BLOG. Or maybe it was just me…
We had gone over to Grammy’s house to do a bit of work and hanging out. So we figured we’d head over to Bill’s BBQ in Wilson for a nice dinner. As we’re pulling into the parking lot, we see a Nissan near their drive-through with smoke coming from the engine compartment. As soon as they lifted the hood, the raging fire was evident. The people manage to get the fire extinguished and the driver goes to start the engine. Not exactly what we’d choose to do… so we figured we’d park the Sienna well out of harm’s way and go to dinner.
After we were done stuffing ourselves full of good Eastern North Carolina barbecue (done with a vinegar-based sauce as opposed to the pork done west of I-85 which is a tomato-based sauce), we noticed a deputy from the Wilson County Sheriff coming in to get some of the good stuff.
Knowing that Nicholas likes police cars, we figured that we’d ask this deputy if Nicholas could get a look at the inside of his vehicle. The deputy kindly agreed and lead us out to his ride which was (and I’m not kidding!) a truck. He pops the door and turns on the blue lights…and of course, Nicholas was looking the other way. But he got interested enough a couple of seconds later as the deputy gave an overview of the patrol area. The county is 371 square miles with 72,000+ people…and there are five of these trucks on patrol at any given time. They prefer the trucks because they can go off-road much easier, take much more of a beating, and have the power to keep up with just about anything. The surprising thing about the inside was that it didn’t have that usual plexiglas partition. Our friendly deputy explained that they prefer to keep the suspects cuffed and belted up front so in case they missed something on a search, it’ll be easier to deal with and keep them under observation up front rather than deal with an attack from the rear (and the plexiglas can be kicked out by a determined crook). Interesting… you normally don’t see the crooks get a ride up front.
As you can imagine, it was soon time for friendly Deputy Tomlinson to resume his patrol helping to keep the city and county of Wilson safe from the ne’er-do-wells out there. But he had enough time to light the lights and hit the sirens as we were all waving goodbye.
They really are the good guys doing what is often a thankless job!
But it was really nice spending time with someone who obviously loves what he does and takes to protect and to serve seriously by giving a couple of minutes to give a little guy a thrill to see the tools of the law enforcement trade. Deputy Tomlinson…you’re A-OK in our book and Wilson County is lucky to have you on the beat!
And who knows, someone might well have been inspired to wear a badge tonight.
