Time To Pay For The Donuts!

If you drive thru Independence, Iowa… be careful of the speed trap laid at the edge of town! In fact, I would suggest you bypass the town altogether!!

We noticed the patrol car hidden as we entered town but didn’t pay much attention. As we passed the car pulled out behind us. No need to worry we naively thought, as Himself does not speed. We stopped at a stop sign: a full and complete stop… another thing Himself always does (it takes us a while to get wherever we’re going… LOL).

We stopped paying attention to the cop, as we were looking for someplace to have dinner and fuel up Little Red. So we were shocked when blue lights started flashing in our rearview mirrors!

We pulled into a parking lot and the cop strutted up to Himself’s window.

Cop: “Do you know why I pulled you over?”

Himself: “No… I wasn’t speeding.”

Cop: “In the state of Iowa it is illegal to have a license plate frame. I couldn’t even tell you had a license plate!”

Now we were both in shock! We had that frame on for years and you most definitely CAN read the plate. We’ve even been part of routine traffic checks (in several states) and nothing has ever been said.

Himself: “I’m sorry, we’re tourist from TN and we couldn’t know that. I’ll take it right off.”

Cop: “Well… I’m going to have to write you a citation for it. I don’t know what else I could do!”

I thought to myself, “Barney, you could give us a warning and have us remove it right now.” Of course I knew better than to speak those thoughts tho!

So Himself gave the cop our information and he strutted (I'm serious!) back to his car. When he finally gets back and starts writing up the ticket, he makes comments about what fines he is dealing out... and that we also don’t have a front plate at all. I informed him that they are not required by TN. You know… he actually looked disappointed he couldn’t hang that one on us also.

So… the coffers of Independence, Iowa have been increased by their tourist tariff to the sum of $87. The local businesses lost revenue of 2 dinner meals… a fuel fill-up… and a few things we needed to pick up at the local grocer -- since the only thing we wanted to see after that was Independence, Iowa in our rearview mirror!  On our way out of town, we passed many Iowa plated cars with Hawkeye and dealership plate frames...

But you know... the donut shop is probably very happy!