When one applies for car insurance, the insurer inquires as to the driving habits of the person purchasing the insurance.
A string of questions usually includes:
Have you been convicted of a moving violation within the past three years? If yes, explain. In the future I will have to answer “Yes” to All-Farm-Geico-Mutual-Travelers Insurance because:
I passed a dead gal.
Actually, I passed a dead gal’s friends.
*blink *blink
I have always respected the dead when they are taking their final cruise to be placed at peace. I have stopped or pulled off the road to let the funeral procession proceed.
Except yesterday.
I was cruising down the four lane street that passes in front of the Place-of-Plots Cemetery at noon, I was in the left lane passing a line of cars in the right lane. As soon as I saw the cruiser (macho=cruiser) with lights flashing, I realized the right lane of traffic was a funeral procession turning into the Constant-Ground-Under-Repair Resting Land.
I stopped about 200 yards short of the entrance to the Official-Planting-Ground-for-the-Unburnable.
An officer (macho=officer) stepped off the curb and into my lane and pointed to his right to the other entrance to Come-To-Jesus Memorial Lawns.
*blink
Then he pointed at me and pointed there again. I slowly rolled forward and read his lips “pull over.”
*blink *blink
A female officer approached and asked if I knew it was against the law to pass a funeral procession.
Suppressing “Are You F***ing Kidding Me?” I said no, explaining that I thought it was only a sign of courtesy and respect and as soon as I realized I was passing the dead gal’s friends, I stopped.
Mrs. Taylor lived to be 95 years old and was a hard worker. I would have liked her. She worked her fingers to the bone…
She was a folder at Union Underwear and worked at Wishy Washy Laundromat after her retirement.
(Union Underwear is now Fruit-of-the-Loom)… and was old enough that she had out-lived a lot of her family.
She was preceded in death by a daughter, Linda Sue Phelps; a son, Bobby Ray Taylor; four brothers, John Smith, George Smith, Roy Smith and Coy Smith; five sisters, Ester Jones, Myrtle Woods, Helen Hood, Jane Andrews and Velma Miller; and a granddaughter, Sheila Ann Young.
I respect her. But since I don’t have details about her friends in the funeral procession, I don’t know about them.
No matter. In Kentucky KRS 189.378 (8) is the law regarding funeral processions:
When a funeral procession is in progress, a person driving a vehicle not in the procession shall not pass or overtake any vehicle in the procession…
*blink
Respect has nothing to do with it. Lawmakers decided that drivers in Kentucky should not pass dead people. Smallburg’s finest persons-in-blue decided that I was a out-of-control scofflaw that needed to be taught a hard lesson.
They snatched me from the car and beat me to a bloody pulp with their nightsticks, blinded me with pepper spray and tased me within an inch of my life.
I got a Uniform Citation along with an April 16 court date.
Respect the dead, but Smallburg cops that pull funeral procession duty aren’t worth it.
UPDATE: an acquaintance told me she got a Uniform Officer Citation for not signaling while changing lanes. There was no traffic around her, she just moved over 1/2 a lane to avoid a temporary steel plate covering a pothole!
