Mom's Escapades

Checking the Map

Wisconsin in February can have a bleak look to it, especially in the country. The farmland that in the summer is green and lush with the promise of life lies stubbornly resisting the temptation to become tundra. Since most of the state doesn’t get the benefit of winds coming off the Great Lakes to move the air, clouds are stranded in the sky and cast dull gray shadows over the land, and the slate color of the clouds themselves doesn’t add anything to cheer the mood.
My mother grew up in Northern Michigan and has lived almost her entire life in this environment. She is a small woman, standing 5’2”, with a slight frame to match her stature. Her straight hair is cut to around chin-length in a conservative style, and her wire-frame glasses only contribute to the delicate and harmless image that her body implies.
There is something, however, in those green eyes which could give away the rebellion in her soul.
A few years ago, my grandfather died, and my Mom and her sister and brother-in-law made the trip from Madison up to his place in Northern Michigan to clean out the house and shut it down. At the time, my Mom was 59 and not yet a grandparent. She drove an Acura Legend, which she has always praised for its responsiveness and power, as if it were a thoroughbred horse.
It was on just such one of these February days that my Mom was cruising along Highway 51 on her way back home after the trip north. Not being one to tarry on the highway, and with her trusty fuzz buster on, Mom claims that she was pushing around 80.
Unfortunately, a state trooper passed her on the other side of the highway, heading the opposite direction. His radar was on because Mom’s fuzz buster buzzed, and Mom saw him turn his lights on after their cars had passed each other. I can’t really tell you what instinct took hold of her at that point, maybe it was a dormant reflex that she had developed as a young driver in Upper Michigan drag racing with the boys. Whatever the case, Mom knew that she would be nailed to the wall if the cop caught her, and, since she had already had her license suspended in the past for having too many speeding tickets, the instinct told her to get the hell out of there. And so my petite mother put the pedal to the metal.
I’m not sure how fast she made that car go, but I do know that as soon as she spotted a farmer’s driveway, Mom pulled in. She took the car down so that it would be hidden from the highway by the farmer’s house, and she stopped. In order to look inconspicuous, she pulled a map out of her glove compartment and started to consult it.
The farmer, curious about why someone had driven into his driveway and was now looking at a map, approached my Mom in the car. She asked him if he knew how to get onto Highway 51, which was, of course, the highway that she had just left. I can only imagine the flush in her cheeks as her heart palpitated with the thrill.
However long it was that my Mom hung out in the driveway there waiting for the police to give up on her, it worked. When she returned to the road and started back towards Madison, she had slipped their grip.

Proper Role Modeling

Jessie was about 14 while Beth Anne was around 20 and lived in Milwaukee at the time. The two of them were driving from Milwaukee to Madison on one of those perfectly wonderful summer nights, as Jessie says. It was one of those quiet and cool evenings after the flypaper humidity of a hot day. They were getting in late, around 3am. Madison’s streets were pretty much empty, and that is when Beth Anne and Jessie came roaring into town.
The two of them were tooling along down East Wash, goin’ real fast, y’know, when all of sudden this cop light comes on behind them. Beth Anne said: “Oh shit. Hold on.” And she tromped it.
Beth Anne turned down that little street that goes by Ella’s Deli on the East Side, but the cop continued behind them. Beth Anne veered onto 3rd St., pulled into a driveway, turned off the lights and the car, and took her foot off the brake pedal. The two sisters slid down the seats to hide, but, fortunately, the cop didn’t come down that street. So Beth Anne and Jessie escaped, and Jessie found a surprising role model in her older sister.


BMWs Suck

One night, not so long ago, Jessie was at home, and Beth Anne called. She was laughing, and saying: “Oh, I love my car, I just love my car.” So Jessie knew that it was a driving story.
Beth Anne had just come home from MATC. At a light, a young man was next to her in a new BMW. He roared away as soon as the light turned green. Beth Anne followed along at a more decorous pace, of course.
At the next light, the young male driver again zipped away with his hotrod BMW as soon as the light changed to green.
This was getting to be a bit much for a former drag racing queen. At the following light, Beth Anne, decided that she had had enough. Casting a glare out of her window at the upstart, as soon as the light switched, Beth Anne hammered it. That youngster was left behind with his fancy car to eat her dust.
The phone call that followed to Jessie included such phrases as: “I love my car. It’s so fast. We beat a BMW!”
At the time, Beth Anne was just around 60.


Used to Be You Could Leave Your Door Open….

As family memory has it, the first time that Beth escaped the fuzz was shortly after she had gotten her driver’s license. She was speeding and alone in her car one day in Menominee, when, sure enough, a police officer turned up on her tail, lights flashing, sirens blaring, motioning to her to pull over. Most folks would do that, figuring that if the cop was already there, they really had no other choice. I’m not sure if it was youthful inexperience that caused Mom to respond differently, but whatever it was, instead of stopping, she ran.
A high speed chase in Menominee, Michigan is probably the most excitement that that town gets in a couple of years, and I can just imagine the families on the street pausing to watch the sedan being pursued by the police. Beth was a new driver, but she already had some drag racing experience under her belt. This, coupled with her quick wits, allowed her to avoid capture by dodging amongst the town’s streets. Instinctively, Beth must have known that that she was going to have to take cover in order to really beat the rap. So when she saw a driveway with an open garage door and no car inside, she seized the moment, drove in, got out and shut the door.
In case you hadn’t guessed, the cop didn’t find her. And thus began a lifetime of high-speed adventure.



*****

I’m not sure if there are any unreported cop evasion stories, but I suspect somehow that these are just a small sample of a long career of driving escapades. After all, we know that Mom had her license suspended at one point, but we don’t know how many times she didn’t get caught.