Another Reason To Not Take a Vacation: My Life As a Wanted Criminal

Three days before I went on vacation I got a ticket for having an expired license plate tag and no proof of insurance. I don't know; I lost my card somewhere. Anyway, the handsome, apparently-14-year-old Oldham County Deputy Sheriff who pulled me over was very polite, giving me all the instruction any normal person would need about how to clean the problem up and reminding me -- repeatedly -- that I had 10 days to get my documentation to the court.

Three days later, I went on a 10 day vacation without having done anything about registering my car. Which means, doing the math, that one afternoon in Napa I kind of technically missed my court date.

I got home, got my car registered, made a note that I had to go out to the Oldham County police station or court or something to clean-up the paperwork, and went back to a total of about 300 unanswered e- and voice mails.

So last Friday there appeared on the front door of my house a three-by-five card noting that a Jefferson County Sheriff's Deputy (I live in Jefferson County) had stopped, but no one was home. I shook my head in self loathing and explained to my wife about the car registration. She's used to this kind of thing from me. I'm not real religious about car registrations or the other paperwork details of life. It's why my wife paid the bills for most of our marriage, until online banking turned bill paying into a kind of video game.

I called the number on the three-by-five card and, since it was after hours, left a message. I figured I was being served legal papers about the citation and would try to make it easy on the Deputy, since the whole thing was my fault.

The Deputy and I finally talked yesterday and here's what he told me:

No, I wasn't there to serve papers. Oldham County has issued a warrant for your arrest. I was there to arrest you.

Perhaps understandably, this focused me a lot more on solving the problem quickly. I asked the deputy what I should do, and he explained:

Well, you could come downtown and we'll take you into custody. Then you can post the $250 cash bail, we'll get you another court date, and you can go. Or you could go to Oldham County, but I can't guarantee they won't just arrest you on the spot. They take failure to appear pretty seriously out there.

The western end of Oldham County is generally populated by well-to-do commuters, McMansion people and residents of middle-management subdivisions, many of whom moved to the country to escape Jefferson County schools which are, perhaps not coincidentally, filled with black people. It is a law and order place where governmental and quasi-governmental agencies make sure people mow their lawns and put their mailboxes on the right kinds of poles and don't park jalopies in the driveway. I work in western Oldham County, and we're located there because taxes are low and, when one or the other of us accidentally sets off the alarm, the police arrive in about 20 seconds.

Despite that, my instinct was to go directly to the source. I called Oldham County to get a read on how likely they were to arrest me, and found out that the judge who had issued the arrest warrant was in session today and if I came right down and posted my $250 cash bail I could perhaps get on the docket today and get the whole thing cleaned up. The woman I talked to didn't seem at all inclined to have me arrested, and when I apologized for taking up her time she said, "Don't worry about it. It happens all the time."

By this time, word had leaked out around the office that I was a fugitive from the law, and people were coming in saying comforting things like:

"Are you worried you'll be raped in prison?"
"Are you going to get prison tattoos on your knuckles?"

And my own personal favorite:

"Do I get a reward if I turn you in?"

At the Oldham County Courthouse everyone was helpful and understanding, and I was handed over to a Deputy who looked like he spent his nights and weekends hoisting railroad locomotives over his head as a warm-up for his regular work-outs. He "served the warrant," as they say, escorting me into a back room, filling out paperwork, and announcing that he was taking me into custody.

Huh? What? It all seemed so civil. I walked in under my own power! And now I'm being taken into custody?

"That means," explained the Deputy, "you can't leave the building."

He led me down the hall to the courtroom, where -- among other things -- I learned about eastern Oldham County.

If western Oldham County is the kind of place where rich people bid $2,000 for a charity wine tasting, eastern Oldham County remains firmly in the grip of what we here in Kentucky sometimes refer to as "hillbillies." There's a reason why Jerry Springer taped his show in Cincinnati: because it's just up the road from eastern Oldham County and a lot of other Kentucky counties just like it where his guests lead their chaotic lives. And there's a reason why Baptists rail against alcohol consumption, which is evident in those chaotic lives. And both of those reasons were apparent in the chaotic cheap seats of that entry level Oldham County courtroom. There, people who had, through a long series of small, bad decisions, made an utter hash of their lives, came to their reckoning.

"Sit there," the deputy said, pointing at the empty jury box, separated from the rabble by a wooden rail.

This day in court was not complicated. There were not trials being held, no complicated negotiations to maneuver. The judge and his incredibly efficient team were processing largely inconsequential cases of self-destruction where a plea agreement had been reached -- with the occaisional bozo like me to provide a break. I came to think of the jury box as the Respectable Citizen Express Line, since those of us sequestered there were generally cleaner and subject to entirely administrative legal issues. But that is perhaps too self-elevating. I think the jury box was, instead, a time management expedient. The people out in the gallery were 10 minute problems; the people in the jury box were one minute problems. The judge's method, I think, was to pool the one minute problems in one place and then squeeze them in when there was a break in the 10 minute line.

So I sat there for a while and watched people plead guilty to crimes that can only be understood, at an emotional level, when one understands alcohol and bad impulse control. One guy, charged with harassment for calling his ex-girlfriend 300 times, paid a $100 fine and promised to enroll in an alcohol treatment program. Another guy, charged with the terroristic threatening of his landlord, paid $100 and was sentenced to anger management training. There was a kid with a Mohawk and a woman so fat she could barely walk.

Case after case, people in legible t-shirts and camouflage pants and bad cut-offs stood up in front of the judge and accepted the consequences of momentary stupidity. Sitting through the session, I felt two things.

First, I felt really sorry for the people coming before the court. There wasn't one of them who seemed even a little bit bad, but their lives had gone haywire. They were in front of a judge, first of all, but more than that: every single one of them asked for two months or three months or four months to pay minor fines and court costs. One guy was pissed because he'd paid his bail in another county and wasn't going to get cash for showing up, and he needed the bail refund to pay his rent.

And second, sitting there will surely make most people feel pretty good about their own lives. I tend to think of myself as living in absolute squalor and chaos. The cracks in the plaster above the fireplace have been there for a couple of years now. The basement is a mess. There's an inch of dog hair on the TV room carpet. Somewhere around here there's an unpaid bill, because we keep getting dinnertime phone calls from Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

But compared to the people that parade through the Oldham County court every day, my life is running smooth as can be. Except, you know, that yesterday I was one of them, albeit not charged with anything involving alcohol and bad judgment, but one of them just the same.

They called my name and I went up and offered my proof of insurance and registration. All charges were dismissed, I was able to pay my $30 court costs without scheduling time payments, and I was on my way. I'd asked my wife to keep her cell phone with her, in case Oldham County arrested me on the spot and I needed bail or a lawyer or something, and as I walked out into the beautiful fall day I called her to tell her that I was a free man. She didn't answer. You know who you can count on in a pinch.

As I got to my car, my phone rang. It was someone from work, asking if they could bring me a cake with a file in it.

Comments

[Wally]

First, the fixation with wine. Now, you are taken into custody. Grasshopper, your journey to becoming me is almost complete.

[Lee]

My mom's family is eastern Oldham folks, Westport to be exact.

Funny thing though that you kind of mention. With the rapid migration of people from Jefferson moving into Oldham, a good number of the family is moving further east, into Henry and Trimble county. The land is cheaper, and the feel less suburban.

[Frank]

The story is hilarious, mostly because I lived through pretty much the same thing three years ago. Except all I had to do was show up and pay a $125 without being taken into custody.

However, I do notice that you really can't write about much of anything without either taking pot shots at Republicans, or pointing out how every white person in America except you is racist. I like the way you blame everyone else moving to Oldham county on escaping all the blacks in the schools, whereas you moved there because it was cheaper and the police respond faster.

So my question is, are you trying to cover your own racism, or do you just find it impossible to believe that other people might behave as they do because of motives that don't involve being afraid of mixing with the brown people?

[Tom]

I didn't move to Oldham County. I live in Jefferson County. My children attend public schools here, on the few days every year when school is actually in session.

My place of employment is located in Oldham County because Jefferson County has a small employment tax that Oldham does not. I work with rabidly anti-tax Republicans, so in order to save a few hundred dollars a year in taxes I spend a few thousand dollars a year in gas and automobile depreciation driving way the fuck out there every day.

I had no voice in the decision where to locate the company.