I careened through traffic as stealthy as a wounded elk, ignoring both the police sirens and the family of baby ducks that strolled languidly across the next intersection. I took aim and headed straight for the mother duck realizing that I had missed the I-135 exit to Greenville several hours ago and was about to orphan a generation of mounted trophies in full view of some backwater North Carolina shithole.

It was a good thing I knew how to say, "My brake pedal doesn't work in flawless" German, because I was not only Tazered when I crawled out of the capsized hulk of my smoldering car, I was taunted endlessly about my humiliation on the dunes of Normandy.

As backwater shit holes go, you can do worse than Ham Shelter, North Carolina located halfway between Ashville and a Sealy matress that fell off a Hertz truck.

"Deputy Tutwaller here says she clocked you doing the speed limit with hair as long as her sister's", Judge Joshua P. Bumkin yelled at me through a Duke Blue Devils bullhorn. He was livid, like how dare I hunt ducks with a car knowing perfectly well it was off-season. He buttered his Texas toast and lit into a mess of hash browns as I cursed God for letting me get stun-gunned in a town so small they had to bother the only judge in the county who could set my bail at breakfast.

They marvelled at it, talkin' 'bout how the magistrates in Charlotte now hold arraignments via remote conferencing and 'round these parts, that means getting hauled into a Waffle House at 2:34 AM for an Ad Hoc traffic court.

He just spewed sausage and toast crumbs at me, aided by that damnable basketball souvineer bull horn, as I hastily made my escape. Deputy Tutwaller was a high-strung tomboy of a gal, but she was no match for the way I'd walked out of the Waffle House ten minutes priviously, drizzling maple syrup from my hands, still cuffed behind my back.

My driver's liscense came in the mail last December with a Christmas card From Judge Bumpkin's Clerk of Court.

"We used to give Deputy Tutwaller shit about how that hippie snuck away from her in court. We used to give her shit about how she kept getting up and falling back down in that fuckin' syrup trying to make up for ten minutes of your hippie ass on the loose-"Crawl", I yelled. "Crawl!"-but then we had to fire her causa she's a lesbian and all."

We found your license cleaning out her locker.

Merry Cristmas,
God Bless,
And Get a Haircut!