North Dakota, Vehicle Violation #1160805741

Poetry

Here’s one of my favorite childhood poems, “The Tale of Custard the Dragon” by Ogden Nash

Journeying

The speed limit on this two-lane road in North Dakota is fifty-five. The little truck in front of me is going fifty. I fly around it doing seventy. The morning is cold and clear, the landscape wide. In the last two hours, I’ve seen several times as many cows as cars, so I’m surprised when I spot three lined up behind another coming toward me in the opposite lane. Seconds before I pass, I realize that the first vehicle is a cop car.

I slow down after the fact. In my rearview mirror, the cop pulls onto the shoulder and turns around. By the time his lights start flashing, I’m pulling over.

I haven’t got a speeding ticket in decades. My nervous system erupts as I roll down the window and rifle through the glove compartment with shaky hands, searching for up-to-date vehicle registration and insurance.

“Did you catch me going sixty-three?” I ask, hopeful and apologetic.

“I clocked you doing sixty-eight, and you were speeding up,” he smiles.

He’s in his thirties with closely cropped hair. I hand over my license and other papers. He takes a few minutes to check them. I hope he’s going to give me a pass. I’ve gotten away with this before. In my twenties, I used to get stopped for speeding a lot. That’s what happens when you learn to drive in Atlanta, Georgia. While I wait, the little green truck passes us, giving us a wide berth. I imagine the driver satisfied at my predicament and feel my shoulders shrink into my seat. I want my car and myself to disappear.

The cop returns with my ticket. Thirty dollars. I ask if it will affect my insurance. “It doesn’t in North Dakota because there’s no points. Don’t know about Nebraska.” I hope not in Nebraska. Our auto insurance is high enough with three young people on it. One son had wreck last year. It was minor, but he was at fault. Another got pulled over for speeding on his way home from work last fall. The officer gave him a warning.

“At least, it’s not very much,” I say.

He chuckles, “We just raised it from ten dollars. That’s not even worth the paper it’s printed on!”

I tell him my kids are going to love that their mom got a speeding ticket. We laugh. He heads back to his patrol car. As I roll up my window and pull back onto the road, I wonder what my husband, who’s driving is as measured and careful as he is, will say to his wife, who finally got caught. The cop doesn’t follow me, but I keep the speedometer at fifty.

Thirty minutes later I’m at a gas station in Bismarck. I’ve bought a fancy granola bar and filled the tank for the last leg of the trip, where I know I won’t be able to find either. As I return to my car, I see a man in a blue beanie, who could be my sons’ age, standing beside the green pick-up. He’s filling a gas can. He looks up as I climb into my car. I’m surprised to see the truck for a third time, and I’m surprised the driver is so young. Old people are the ones who drive slowly, the ones you have to pass. As I pull out of the station, I sweep around his truck, pretending not to notice him, that we’ve encountered each other three times in the last hour. That his recurring presence makes me want to disappear. I don’t see the large manholes covering the gas station fuel tanks. My car jolts over one. It clanks loudly.

Gardening and Making/Mending

Post freeze calendula

We had a hard freeze last week, the first of the season. I returned home from my partner’s apartment in Iowa and found the impatiens in the pot next to the front door and the nasturtiums on the boulevard turned to mush. Surprisingly, the calendula looked as happy as ever.

Before my trip to Iowa, I had cut the bright yellow iris blooming out of season in the backyard. This iris has not bloomed since we’ve owned the house. I do not know why it chose November as the time to start. I put the iris in a jar of water, then wedged the jar in the cup holder of my car for the ride across Iowa. When I returned home, I left the iris still blooming in my partner’s kitchen window.

Also, before my trip, and in preparation for the expected freeze, I pulled up all the tomato and pepper plants. I collected the green tomatoes and have since learned that you can make green tomato bread, pie, salsa, chutney. The list continues. Unfortunately, I also left the bucket of tomatoes in Iowa, a mistake, but I’m hopeful that the tomatoes are green enough that they will not go the way of the impatiens and nasturtiums before I can get ahold of them again.

The last sweater skein and the almost finished shawl

We just wrapped up the second A Thin Space Handmade Item Raffle, the quarterly giveaway of a made-by-me item. The coasters have gone to their new owner. A few nights ago, my brain, busy before sleep, thought up the item for January’s giveaway. I’m excited to start making it!

I’m guessing that my sweater will take one more skein of yarn to finish. I’m so close (but that’s in knitting terms, which means I’ve still got hours left to knit before the sweater is finished). I didn’t bring this last skein with me to Iowa, which meant that I ran out of yarn, while I was there and had to put the sweater away. Whilst not knitting, I remembered the other project that really needs finished, a shawl I’ve been working on (or not) for over a year. If I can get both the shawl and the sweater “off the needles,” then I can start something new. Oh, the promise of something new.