Running in a European city is a great way to get acquainted with the local geography, and gives you a better feel for a place than driving through or taking public transport. It’s a bit different in Texas due to the enormous amounts of space they have – Houston is as big as Israel and and El Salvador for example. I got a sense for the tiny town of Hampstead as I ran through it though this morning. It was quiet, decaying, and the best business to have set up in the last decade would be the one that boards up windows in dilapidated premises. A billboard above a row of run-down ugly building summed it up. The peeling poster on it read simply, “We buy ugly houses”. Clearly they no longer did, or if they did, they boarded up the windows.
I ran past a school run with tiny children disembarking from giant pickups. I ran through a used car lot so large that there were golf carts to ferry customers to see their vehicles. I ran back to the Super Sleazy motel, and struggled with my key for five minutes, trying to gain access to room 104. As I did so, a police cruiser pulled up and a crew-cut monster of a man got out and asked me what was going on here.
I put on my most posh English humble accent and explained that I was trying to gain access to my motel room. I lowered the hood of my sweatshirt to help the goliath law enforcer to distinguish me from a crack addled gunman trying to break a lock, murder some tourists and steal their twinkies.
Our pleasant little chat expanded to what I had been doing this morning, and I confirmed his suspicions that I had been running. I confirmed that I had unexpectedly run through a primary school before realising what it was.
“You had them pretty much on a scare alert at the school.”, he said. “We don’t get too many people runnin’ around here. They called me out to come pick you up. Do you have any ID?”
I explained it was behind the lockeddoor, and we got the manager to open the door. The manager looked even more terrified than I did by Chief Donnie Mordeln. Perhaps he had something to hide. Even though I was innocent and not some junky paedophile, I couldn’t help feeling a little guilty. In England, the middle-class fear the police. In Texas, I suspect everyone does.
Chief went off with my ID, disappointed that I had never been in the military despite the crew-cut in my photos, and left me to stew in my room. As the minutes turned into half an hour, my paranoia stewed into a casserole. My imagination turned ugly with the fact that my driver’s licence and passport have different names, and that this might be a cause for some confusion in the bovine police officer’s investigations. Oh, and I’d used a false name and address on the motel registration form too.
Chief eventually returned to my room with a polaroid camera and a violation ticket. My imagination reeled with Pulp Fiction like possibilities that I may have to squeal like a pig to erase my impending criminal record and have all the action taken away as photographic keep-sakes. Luckily, I didn’t have to do any ass-clowning and the Chief crossed out “Criminal Tresspass” in the violation box, and wrote “Criminal Tresspass Warning” in the warning box.
He assured me that he wasn’t mad at me or nothing, and I wasn’t in no trouble, and asked me for the fourth time what I was doing in the area. Getting the hot-diggity darn out as fast as possible I thought. 11 hours in town before my first brush with the Texas lawmen – bodes well.