1988
“Please turn off your engine and remain in your car,” Eddie’s voice squawked over the loudspeaker as the driver’s door of the car in front of us popped open, smoke still sputtering from its tailpipe.
We had pulled over a blue Plymouth with expired plates near the local college campus. The engine cut out on the car in front of us, the door swung shut and the driver poked her head out the window to look at us, then pulled it back in.
Eddie swung his door wide and it bounced back toward him a little at the end of it’s reach. I slid out of the passenger seat, a little awkward with the unusual weight of a .38 revolver on my hip. Eddie swaggered slightly in his powder blue uniform as he approached the driver’s side of the stopped car.
I approached slowly, scanning the vehicle for any signs of foul play.
“Maam, are you aware that your registration has expired,” Eddie asked, bushing his thick glasses up on his nose. We were both sweating in the summer heat.
“No, oh I didn’t know,” she said, turning toward Ed, looking up at his unruly mop of blond hair.
“Gun,” I shouted and drew my pistol.
Neither Ed nor I knew anything about gun laws.
Strike that. I know that when hunting pheasant a driver may not keep a loaded shotgun in the passenger compartment of a car. I know this because my mother’s friend’s husband from church took my brother and I hunting while we were being watched one afternoon while my mother went to her weekend psychology class the college. He drove with the breach of his double barrel shotgun open to show it was empty, the barrel pointing down at the floor between the two front seats. I know that to carry a handgun loaded and concealed requires a permit from the Sheriff. I know shotguns and rifles may be purchased at age 18 with no felony record, history of internment in a psyche ward or current restraining order, while to buy a pistol the purchaser must be 21 and meet the same standards as well as pass an instant background check. I know that being surprised to find an unholstered pistol in the passenger compartment of a car during a traffic stop is not a good thing.
The handgun was sitting between the driver and passenger on the padded median next to a Big Gulp in a cup holder.
“Get out of the car,” I said.
The man complied.
“Spread your legs and put your hands on the hood.”
I dove into the passenger side, grabbing the pistol from beside the driver, then set it on the hood of the car. Eddie stood on the driver’s side pointing his pistol at the driver and, inadvertently, at me on the other side of the car.
“move back and put your hands on the trunk,” I said.
The man did what I said and I moved around behind him so I was pointing my gun on the diagonal toward him and Ed.
“Ask him if he has a concealed weapons permit,” Ed shouted at me, still pointing his gun at the driver.
“Do you have a concealed weapons permit?” I asked.
The man dipped his finger and thumb in his back pocket and produced an invisible card. He handed the card to me. I looked at it blankly.
“Is it real?” Ed asked.
“How should I know?” I shouted. “It’s invisible.”
The troop, standing behind Ed rolled with laughter.
The parking lots extend for almost a mile around the college football Stadium on thee sides. During games the lots would fill up and parking would spill out into the neighborhoods across the river that snaked through the plain creating a tenuous situation between many of the citizens and the university. During the week the lots would be vast and open, not being close enough to campustown for faculty or students to use them extensively.
That afternoon the Explorers took two patrol cars and a light blue Plymoth out to the lots to practice traffic stops. The point wasn’t to do things right so much as to teach us how much we didn’t know.