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So the other day my Uncle Vinny lands in jail again with six more points on his driver’s license for excessive speed, improper lane changes and nearly running off the side of a mountain. He was clocked and pulled over by a state trooper going 72 mph while driving the Tail of the Dragon toward Robbinsville.
The well-known road is filled with 11 miles of hairpin turns and is popular with drivers who like traveling on it at high speeds just for the exciting thrill of it. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t attempted to drive it while working.
My uncle is a substitute driver and was operating a school bus with 17 kids on board. He claimed it should have been OK since he was just taking ball players to an outta town game after school hours. He thought it would add extra excitement to the evening’s festivities.
Well, it did.
Not only did he break speed laws, but he scared the sin outta the entire peewee football team he was carrying to the game. His roadside stop and sobriety test backed traffic up for miles, ticking off groups of Ferrari and motorcycle operators wanting to drive along the tail.
My dopey uncle wasn’t drunk, but the cop made him blow into the Breathalyzer tube nine separate times because he said you’d have to be empty-bottle drunk to drive the way my uncle was driving.
He also had to walk the line to prove he wasn’t impaired. Since the painted lines follow the hairpin turns on the road, it wasn’t really fair because my uncle had to perform hairpin-turn walking. He even got dizzy and fell over, which didn’t really help the situation or calm the screaming children on the scene. However, anything that gets my uncle outta my hair for a few days is OK with me, including jail time.
He was laying so much rubber from the tires as he went around the tight turns that initially the cop behind him thought the bus was on fire from all the black smoke.
There’s a tree on the crazy stretch of highway that flaunts different parts of vehicles that have been ferociously ripped off in accidents along the way. It’s a festive way to pretty-up death and near-death experiences. I prefer to preserve my life by driving on roads and highways similar to the tail of a rat; nice and straight.
The overall situation was made worse with my uncle’s attire. He was wearing a pair of cutoff blue jean shorts and a white tank top. The shirt read, “No officer, I don’t have a donut for you.”
A roadside photographer on the Tail of the Dragon captured a photo of my uncle coming around a corner with the bus on two wheels. The cop confiscated the photo, saying he needed it for evidence in court.
Folks have seen bear, deer and wild turkey on that stretch of roadway. I believe the only turkey anyone saw that day was my dopey Uncle Vinny.
The only way that situation could have been made any worse would have been if the cop let him drive the bus back home. As it was, 17 children ended up waving goodbye to my uncle through the glass and bars of a police car.
Anngee Quinones-Belian of Murphy is a staff correspondent for the Cherokee Scout. Her humor column runs every other week. Email her at anngeeq@gmail.com.