Just a Stick in the Mud

The city where I worked sits on a large river. Part of the shoreline is designated as a nature preserve. Farmers lease part of the reserve to plant their crops. The rest is thick woods and backwaters teaming with wildlife. On the east side of town, there is a really nice neighborhood nestled in the woods that backs up to the nature preserve. A gravel road separates the lots from the preserve and runs along the side of the river. The area is a perfect spot for kids to hang out to party or do other things that kids don’t want to get caught doing. The wealthy neighbors get fed up from time to time with the partying and call the law.
My partner for the night was Danny C. Danny was a very tall, extremely good looking guy that filled out a uniform nicely. As a matter of fact, he made money on the side doing modeling jobs that his wife would get for him. He and I lived in city about 40 minutes from where we worked so we carpooled. At the time, I drove a motorcycle to work so we both caught a rash of shit when it was my turn to drive. I am about 5 or 6 inches shorter than he so him sitting behind me scrunched down with his arms around me, both in uniform, must have been a site.
It was late spring and a beautiful evening. The shift started out slow but as so many weekend nights on 2nd shift, the later it got, the busier we got. We were assigned to a zone that was mostly the nature preserve and nice large houses. So while everyone else was busting their asses, we were pretty bored. We decided to go check out the gravel road and see if we could find anyone in possession (of alcohol). I was driving.
In several places along the gravel road there are dirt trails that lead to the water. We rounded a curve and Danny thought that he saw a car parked down by the water. I turned down the trail to check it out. No car. Let me repeat, there was no car, no person, not even a squirrel down that path at the water. The hard packed rutted dirt got pretty narrow and abruptly ended. On one side, there were lots of trees. On the other side, pretty thick very green grass. The moon was out but we were under a canopy of trees so it was too dark to back up the twisty road to a wider place. Danny suggested that I do a three point turn. I would have to use part of the grass because it was so narrow.
Me, being the wise sage senior officer by 6 months, I decided just to pull onto the grass to turn around. What a bone-headed decision it turned out to be! Mind you, I mean all four wheels off the hard packed dirt onto the grass. The nice pretty green grass turned out to be a newly PLOWED BEAN field. We sank faster than I could say, “Oh, shit.” I don’t mean that we mired down a little. I mean that I sank that sucker so deep that we could not even open the doors. The headlights and tail lights were partially covered. We both busted out laughing!
We rolled down the windows and crawled out far enough to sit on the window seal with our feet still inside. We had to hold onto the light bar to keep from falling out. As we surveyed the damage, we realized that we were in deep doodoo! Nice…real nice. This was before cell phones so the only way we could get help was to ask for it on the radio. Nope..not doing that! So, we did the next best thing. We radioed that we needed a supervisor to meet us at our location. You know the deserted road by the river deep in the woods. If you remember, the rest of the shift was busy, very busy, so the Sgt. asked us to meet him out on the highway. We had no choice but to tell him that we needed him at our location and then describe to him where we were, on the air for all to hear.
When police officers have smart ass comments to make that can’t be said over the air, they start clicking their mike buttons. You should have heard the clicking going on. It did not help that there had been NO radio traffic from us for at least two hours. People naturally assume that a woman can only be in law enforcement for two reasons; to get laid or they were “queer.” Since I was married at the time, people assumed I was an officer so I could get laid. I mean we did carpool and all.
The Sgt. never showed. We had to call again. We wouldn’t say that we were stuck, only that we need him to meet us at our location. After about another two hours, we were still sitting there on the widows, stuck. The dispatcher kept trying to send us to backup other units on calls and all we could say was that we were busy.
We finally saw head lights bouncing down the trail toward us. A John Deere tractor drove up with this old farmer at the wheel. He was laughing and said, “Looks like you fellers, excuse me mam, are in a fix. Stay in the car, I’ll get ya out.” He climbed down with his shovel and literally had to dig a trench about two feet deep to get under our front bumper. Once he dug the trench, he hooked a chain under the car and pulled us out back onto the packed dirt with his tractor.
We tried to pay him for his help when we thanked him but he was having no part of it. He said, “Me and the wife have been mighty entertained tonight by the two of you. We’ve been listening to the scanner and laughing ourselves sick. I would of had to pay big money to take her to the show and we couldn’t have got more out of it. It was getting close to your shift change so I thought I‘d best come get ya.”
We got back in the car and radioed the Sgt. to 10-25, disregard, and started toward the station. We stopped at the car wash and cleaned off all the mud so it wouldn’t be a mess for the next shift. The Sgt. met us in the parking lot and wanted to know what the hell we had been doing all night. We told him what had happened. He wanted to know the farmer’s name which we never thought to get. He stepped back, looked at us, looked at the car, looked back at us. He said, “Last time I got stuck in the mud, I got covered in mud getting out. Your shoe shine isn’t even messed up. Next time, get a room and NOT on a Friday night!”
We never were able to convince him that we got stuck in the mud and they never let us ride together again.