Just a Little Bit More Than the Law Will Allow

And then there's this:

Last week, a state trooper in Bradley, Maine, pulled over Rosco P. Coltrane, fabled sheriff of television's Hazzard County.

Okay, so the Maine state trooper is real, but the driver he pulled over was a Maine civilian who collects memorabilia from the classic 1980's TV show, the Dukes of Hazzard.  It wasn't the driver who was committing an offense, but the car he was driving - a white, mint-condition 1978 Dodge Monaco (pictured above), complete with sheriff decals, emergency lights, and a siren.

Oh yeah - and a stuffed animal named "Flash," after Coltrane's languid basset hound, in the back seat.

Once the owner of the replica cruiser explained his vehicle to the mystified trooper, named Michael Johnston, Trooper Johnston let him off with a warning to have its emergency lights and siren disconnected.  Even though everybody else in town already knows it's just a show car.

Now, if like Trooper Johnston, you're too young to recognize the '78 Dodge from its days as a ubiquitous police cruiser, allow me to remind you about the Dukes of Hazzard.  I've commented before on that true period piece - it aired during the same era as the prime time soap opera, Dallas.  Poorly written, horribly directed, and badly acted, Dukes was even worse than the artistically-challenged Dallas, but just as wildly popular.

(What does it say about the 1980's that these were two of its signature TV shows?)

There wasn't much cheatin', back-stabbin', and cutthroat oil dealin' in Dukes, but it had what most any other TV show needs to succeed:  goofy comedy, a flashy car (in the form of an orange Dodge Charger with the Confederate Flag painted on its roof), good guys always comin' out on top, and a gorgeous girl.

Catherine Bach played Daisy Duke, the gorgeous girl, and her impossibly short denim shorts - not exactly a new fashion idea - soon were called "Daisy Dukes" because, well, she embodied them so well.

John Schneider and Tom Wopat played the mischievous Duke brothers, Bo and Luke; two guys who never seemed to have regular work, unless you count always running afoul of the county's white-suited villain, Boss Hog. Boss Hog, played by Sorrell Booke, used his feeble-brained sheriff, Coltrane, to protect all of his various nefarious business schemes.  The Duke brothers' iconic orange Charger, christened the General Lee, was just as famous as any of the show's human actors, and exaggerated car chases between the General Lee and Sheriff Coltrane's cruiser - and sometimes, Boss Hog's old white Cadillac convertible - usually ate up more air time than the show's dialog did.

Backing up that cast was the wizened, grizzled Uncle Jesse; the greasy mechanic, Cooter, who usually ended up having to get Bo and Luke out of trouble; and the docile, bashful Deputy Strate, who for southern law enforcement agencies, made about as cringe-worthy a reincarnation of Mayberry's ineffective Barney Fife as any of the show's other blatant stereotypes.

Oh yes - and Flash, the sad-eyed old hound who'd probably seen so many of his owner's hijinks go awry, nothing could perturb him anymore.

Really, it shouldn't have been as popular as it was, but it was.  And its popularity came from its uncanny ability to portray a simpler place and time in American folklore.  Something not quite turn-of-the-century Old South provincialism, but not quite modern-day suburbs-invading-the-countryside, either.  Good and evil were easier to spot and deal with, with good ol' common sense and family values ruling the day.

Of course, it's rather ironic that a cop in rural Maine would pull over a benign, unofficial cop car outfitted as a replica of southern sheriff Coltrane's veee-hickle, as Coltrane would say.  Geographically speaking, Maine is about as far north from the South as you can get, but in terms of its slower pace of life, both New England and the Deep South have a lot in common.  Switch the accents, and take out all of the wealthy Boomers who've recently retired to Maine, and Dukes could have been filmed in the Pine Tree State.  For something like a state trooper's concern over a replica squad car to make news speaks to the down-home nature of Maine, and probably would have made news down South if it happened there, too.  Here in urban north Texas, this wouldn't be news, because most of our local police departments are too busy fighting real crime.

Indeed, word is beginning to spread here in Arlington, between Fort Worth and Dallas, that a new urban gang may be trying to establish itself in the northern part of town.  Just today, our neighborhood crime watch sent out an e-mail with the link to a video on YouTube showing a group of about twenty gangsta-type wannabies in a local park rapping with vulgarities and sinister swagger about drugs and general mayhem.  This same group is suspected of vandalizing another city park and bullying groups that had legitimately reserved pavilions at local parks.  Arlington never used to have a real crime problem, but it has now for years, and the small-town feel that was still here when my family moved down in the late 1970's is long gone.

It's this kind of stuff that is unsettling and even threatening to people like my neighbors and me, since we live in an established neighborhood, and are surrounded by dilapidated apartments like the ones featured in the video.  People who used to leave their front doors unlocked during the day now have security alarms, motion sensors, and closed-circuit cameras wired all over their properties.  If this new gang proves to be a genuine threat, what's next?

If only we had the crime problems like Trooper Johnston - shucks, and even Sheriff Coltrane - have, then everyday life would be a lot less stressful.

Oh well, at least in Bradley, Maine, traffic is tame enough for this replica cruiser's owner to drive his classics around town without fear damaging them - or having them get stolen.  Here in north Texas, meanwhile, driving is done pretty much the same way Bo and Luke careened their General Lee through those dirt roads and ramps on the studio lot.

Yee-haw.
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Saving Climbers from Themselves

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Waterson, February 11, 1986

Climbing.

Ascending, reaching, hoping, enduring, achieving.  Being tenacious, always evaluating the terrain, looking towards the summit.

It's a thrill, a rush, a tangible accomplishment.  Adrenaline.  Bravado.  Something weaker people with fainter hearts and flabbier limbs either can't do, or are too lazy to try.

It's one thing to put on some hiking boots, grab some bottled water, and saunter up a pleasant hillside to take in the vista, or trek along a hilly forest path underneath the graceful, broad canopy of weathered trees.

But either our news media is getting more fascinated with the stories of botched rescues of climbers, or more and more Americans are woefully underestimating their mountain climbing capabilities.

Nick Hall, a native of Maine and professional search-and-rescue ranger, died June 21 while trying to help four climbers from Texas on Washington state's Mount Rainier.

Aaron Beesley, another professional rescuer, fell 90 feet to his death on Utah's Mount Olympus this past Saturday while trying to rescue two teenaged hikers.

Tony Stanley, a California Highway Patrol officer, was injured last Thursday when the rotor blades of his rescue helicopter clipped him as he attempted to reach a stranded hiker - who was a doctor.  The doctor, who had suffered a relatively minor injury by comparison, which had contributed to his need for rescue, ended up saving his rescuer's life.

Granted, considering the number of people who go mountain climbing for recreation every day all over the United States, these incidents could be considered statistically irrelevant.  And neither Hall, Beesley, nor Stanley were forced to work as rescuers.  News reports of their heroics portray each of them as lovers of their jobs and passionate about helping people.  Indeed, you'd have to be, to do these sorts of things for a living.

But dying while doing something for a living puts a different spin on it, doesn't it?  Especially when people die trying to rescue you.

We've all seen the news reports of residents in the path of a hurricane or wildfire who refuse evacuation orders and think they can defy Mother Nature.  At some point in the evacuation scenario, local law enforcement agencies will declare that if you stay, and you find yourself in imminent danger, rescuers will not be sent in to save you.  And I agree wholeheartedly with that decree.  The job of police officers and fire fighters is to protect us, but we have an obligation to be prudent about our own safety.  We can't expect to ignore warnings for our own health and welfare and then expect somebody to risk their own life to pluck us from death at the last minute because we didn't act on our own behalf sooner.

Yes, the line between refusing to evacuate in the face of a hurricane and exposing one's self to getting stuck on a mountain is fairly vague and gray.  It's certainly not crystal-clear, is it?  Especially since climbers are the ones intentionally putting themselves into an environment of danger precisely because danger is part of the attraction.  Even if you're so afraid of life that you never leave your house, there is plenty of danger right in your house.  However, our post-industrial society has designed many ways to mitigate the most common of dangers, and many of the dangers to which we're exposed in normal life aren't dangerous themselves to the people who may need to rescue us.  Shucks, that's one of the reasons people go climb mountains: because they can get away from all of the circumstances of ordinary life.  Getting away from ordinary life means you usually have to go someplace extraordinary.

Death-defyingly extraordinary.

Not that there's anything wrong with escaping to nature, going hiking, or even climbing mountains.  To the extent that risk is a part of life, climbing mountains for some people might be safer than trying to cross a Midtown Manhattan intersection.

But how American is it of climbers to feel entitled to be rescued if they get themselves into trouble?  If you're climbing in a national or state park, my taxes are helping to make sure you get help out there in the middle of noplace.  Sure enough, most rescuers employed by taxpayers don't get paid much, at least relative to their job description (saving lives, remember?).  But in our current fever to abolish entitlements, is it expecting too much for mountain climbers to pay 100% of the cost of employing those who might need to rescue them?

After all, they're willing to give their life for you.

All you want to do is climb a mountain.

Maybe you don't mind the inequity in roles.  After all, we Americans are programmed to live for fun.  And maybe my personal disregard for mountain climbing as a sport makes me disproportionately biased on this subject.  Before you write me off as just another hardened cynic, though, I know of two friends who consider themselves pretty good amateur climbers.  Still, I feel confident in what I say because both of them have scoffed to me about their peers who don't soberly weigh the costs before each climb.

At the end of the day, however, doesn't it seem that the reasons people use for justifying climbing mountains can be explored in other activities - activities in which the risks that endanger them don't also endanger the people who may need to rescue them?

The last words of American patriot Nathan Hale, before the British hung him for spying during the Revolutionary War, purportedly were, "I regret that I have but one life to give for my country."

A noble sentiment, indeed.

I wonder if mountain climbers start each trek saying, "I regret that each first responder has but one life to give for my risky behavior."
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