Stories – Cops in a Terraplane

My grandfather’s recent passing has motivated me to move this blog back to it’s original intentions. One of my original goals was to relate stories about my life and my family’s life. My grandparents and great grandparents were somewhat colorful characters, and over the years we have quite a few stories. Some you may find interesting, some you may not, but I thought I would start out with the story that was probably my grandfather’s favorite.

My grandfather was always a spirited individual. I don’t think he was ever really bad, or dishonest, but he did have quite the attitude. One place this manifested was in his driving. When he was driving his old pickup he would go up and down the road at 30mph, not matter what the speed limit was, but get him behind the wheel of a car and it was a totally different situation.

Back when he was a kid in the early 40s, my great grandfather had a Buick. If memory serves it was a 1936 model. This car was a very powerful vehicle at the time, much faster than many things on the road. For those of you familiar with Loveland Colorado, one of the main roads through town, Lincoln Ave, was a two way street at the time (it’s been a one way for as long as I remember). There was an armory just south of 1st street on Lincoln, probably about the last thing on the way out of town. After the armory the road goes down a hill, continues for 2-3 miles before heading up what has been traditionally known as Derby Hill.

My grandfather, grandmother, and some other friends were headed out to the Kness farm one evening, and my grandfather was exceeding the speed limit. The local police were sitting in the armory parking lot in a Hudson Terraplane when my grandfather came flying by. Now the Terraplane was supposed to be a powerful vehicle as well, but the cops didn’t even bother to give chase.

The next day, my great grandfather received a letter in the mail from the police. They wanted him to come in for a traffic ticket. He went and and the cops told him his car had been speeding the night before. My great grandfather told them he wasn’t driving the car last night, so it couldn’t have been him. He then asked the police “If the car was speeding, why didn’t you stop it”. The cops responded “He was going so fast, by the time we would have gotten started he would have been over Derby Hill”