Cops now and then

Drove three hours to the family picnic today. Used to be an hour and a half, but they’ve changed the venue to make it “more convenient.”

Ya, right!

And then three hours home. Six hours of driving for a plate of Omi’s potato salad. Thank God she’s back to the original recipe after those years in the wilderness with the low-fat recipe.

It’s always interesting, of course, to see who is ahead of whom in that race down the Alzheimer Highway. You don’t want to miss that!

Aside from that, the highlight was a sit-down with cousin Klaus, who has re-invented himself as a school-bus driver at the ripe enough age of 60. He’s got what must be one of the longest school-bus routes in Ontario. It starts in Drayton and ends at a private Christian high school in Breslau, with many zigs and zags in between.

That’s a helluva bus ride for those kids, and obviously the parents see enough merit in that private school to not only pay the freight, but to subject their spawn to that bus ride as well.

Klaus and I used to spend too much time together in the good old pot-smoking beer-guzzling era of irresponsibility. We were trying to explain to his son Isaac the difference between policing now and policing when we were his age. Isaac is a very level-headed young man half-way through an apprenticeship as a diesel mechanic. That’ll be six-numbers per year territory when he has his ticket, but in the meantime we’re tag teaming him on the virtues of keeping your nose clean and driving sober etc.

So his dad tells him, hey, back in the day the cops used to pull you over, take all your booze, and send you on your way.

And I added, when they pull you over today, they’ll take all your booze, yank you into Police HQ to embark on a legal nightmare that will cost you thousands of dollars, and thank God you’ve got a white ass because otherwise you’ve got a really good chance of things getting way worse than that.

When we were kids, cops had compassion.

Now they’ve got quotas.