Bio of "The Pirate Captain T"

Spring 1970

When I started driving, Dad had offered to pay my car insurance until I got my fist ticket. You would think this would really motivate me and it did to some degree. I started driving actually before I even had a learners permit, but that is another story.

I was living at home the first year that I attended Santa Rosa Junior College. Commuting from Tomales to Santa Rosa via Rhonert Park and up the freeway to Santa Rosa. All the time I have been driving I have a little problem of driving on remote control, just thinking about anything but driving and going down the road. This has caused many adventures in the effort to go back to the right turn off I was was supposed to take or ending up somewhere I was not going.

Well on this lovely afternoon, I was headed down Hwy 101 freeway from Santa Rosa to Rhonert Park where I normally take the exit and then run some back roads to get home to Tomales. On this day, driving on remote control, I passed my exit and realized it just after passing it. I did not feel like going the few miles to the next exit in Petaluma, and the freeway was not very busy. There was a nice grassy medium so I decided I would make a u-turn. I was headed uphill and there was no traffic behind me and no traffic on the other side up the hill. So I slowed down and whipped the little sprite into the grass medium and got to the freeway headed the other way. Picked up speed and took my exit. As I was turning under the freeway, I see red lights in my rear view mirror!!! So I got a ticket for making a u-turn on the freeway!!!

Well I was not going to just pay it so I decided to go to court and see what I could do about it. Since then I have made it a standard thing not to go to court right away and to delay court a couple times and then go. That method has gotten me out of about half the tickets I ever got.

So this day I show up in court and I find 2 of my friends there as well. We all had tickets from the same officer and it was our first time to talk with judge. I started with my story and that the officer could not have seen me actually make the u-turn, only that he saw my tracks in grass and knew I was had not been in front of him coming up the freeway. My friends and I all indicated we drove red sports cars and that officers pick on red cars because we are easier to see. Fortunately, being the judge had a sense of humor and bought the story for us and dismissed all three of our tickets. It might also have ben because it was first offence for each of us and we were young college kids trying to get our lives started. You buy that right??

Well, I was happy my ticket was dismissed and I would not have start paying for my own car insurance. That was until the first of the month when dad came to me a requested that I pay my share of the car insurance!! But Dad, the ticket was dismissed, it will not count or effect anything. He said the deal was that he would pay until I GOT A TICKET, with no regard as to disposition. So since then I have paid my own insurance.

I want everyone to note that my premise that police officers pick on cars that are red was confirmed with an episode of Big Bang Theory years later. Sheldon's friends had decided he needed to learn to drive and had setup and a very good virtual driving station and were configuring it. They were going to have him driving a red Ford Taurus and he wriggled up his lips and nose and said, "Statistically police give people in red cars more hassles than other color cars. I don't want no trouble with the fuzz!"