Sheriffs
For me the concept of "sheriff" is filled with implications.
When I was a child in NE Washington, D.C., Sheriff Road was a boundary beyond which all was forbidden mystery. The first arch-villain I ran into in my reading was the Sheriff of Nottingham, Robin Hood's perennial foe. So far the miniseries that has impressed me most is "Chiefs," though, because it had a rural setting, I thought it should've been called "Sheriffs" instead. Broadcast in 1983, it starred Billy Dee Williams, Brad Davis, Keith Carradine, and Charlton Heston, and it was about a succession of three very different Southern law officers in different eras whose fates nevertheless are linked to the same serial killer.
When we gave our neighbors and friends in D.C. the shocking news that we were setting up residence deep in the sticks of Virginia, we were earnestly warned to watch out for the KKK, the rednecks, and the bears, not necessarily in that order. So far I haven't heard of the KKK having any chapters around here. I'm told that there are plenty of "rednecks" around, but their code seems to be that if you don't bother them, they won't bother you (which is more than could sometimes be said for the city), and I've had no trouble at all in adhering to that code. I have had a couple of up close encounters with bears, but that resulted only in some light damage to my beehives, and in fact it gave us some unexpected prestige in the neighborhood and even newspaper coverage.
But I wasn't worried about any of those perils. I was worried about the sheriff.
That's because my faith in being treated fairly by the law is lower than it should be. One of the most obvious reasons is the heavy over-representation of people who look like me in prisons all over the land. But so far, in over 25 years, none of the three men who have been sheriffs in this county have found reason to take an interest in anything I'm doing.
The chief guiding lights of back-of-the-landers such as myself, Scott and Helen Nearing, reported that all they ever saw of local law enforcement in their Vermont rural area was when they happened to look up and notice a deputy's car passing by -- about once every five or six years.
It would be about the same here, except try once every twelve years. Actually I've seen a little more than that of the various sheriffs, because they have to run for office, and for a while my wife and I were active in the county's Democratic Party.
I got to thinking about sheriffs because recently, in her "Collective Sigh" weblog, Andante ran an extremely interesting three-part exposé about a rogue sheriff in her part of North Carolina, the self-proclaimed "toughest sheriff in America," a man named Gerald Hege, and I highly recommend it to you.
That got me to thinking about the second sheriff that we've had during my time here in Nelson County, Virginia. He was the complete opposite of Andante's guy, and the rest of this post is a slight elaboration of a comment that I entered on her site. I hope she doesn't mind. I have always liked telling people about this man.
His name was Ron Wood. He looked just like that sheriff that was in the American Express TV ads some years ago, standing sternly by while the unlucky speeders that he had caught were calling home for money to pay their fines. Wood had all that big, bluff appearance of a sterotypical tough Southern sheriff, though in reality he was the friendliest guy imaginable.
Wherever Wood showed up, no matter what the company, he invariably shook hands with all the men he could reach, and he hugged all the women -- at length. I am confident that he spent time standing by the side of roads and waving at all the pickup trucks that went by, because I saw him do that once.
A neighbor who worked in the police department in a city nearby spoke of how Wood came to pick up a prisoner. He greeted all the police there in his usual extra friendly fashion, but the city police were taken a little aback when Wood greeted the prisoner in exactly the same way!
Wood had a reputation for being slow to make arrests, and political opponents tried to use his "poor" arrest record against him but failed badly. Instead he would try to get people to work out their differences amicably, and there was no negative correlation between his arrest record and the crime rate in his area.
Unfortunately heart trouble took Sheriff Ron Wood out of here way too early. It was a big loss for the county and the world.
When I was a child in NE Washington, D.C., Sheriff Road was a boundary beyond which all was forbidden mystery. The first arch-villain I ran into in my reading was the Sheriff of Nottingham, Robin Hood's perennial foe. So far the miniseries that has impressed me most is "Chiefs," though, because it had a rural setting, I thought it should've been called "Sheriffs" instead. Broadcast in 1983, it starred Billy Dee Williams, Brad Davis, Keith Carradine, and Charlton Heston, and it was about a succession of three very different Southern law officers in different eras whose fates nevertheless are linked to the same serial killer.
When we gave our neighbors and friends in D.C. the shocking news that we were setting up residence deep in the sticks of Virginia, we were earnestly warned to watch out for the KKK, the rednecks, and the bears, not necessarily in that order. So far I haven't heard of the KKK having any chapters around here. I'm told that there are plenty of "rednecks" around, but their code seems to be that if you don't bother them, they won't bother you (which is more than could sometimes be said for the city), and I've had no trouble at all in adhering to that code. I have had a couple of up close encounters with bears, but that resulted only in some light damage to my beehives, and in fact it gave us some unexpected prestige in the neighborhood and even newspaper coverage.
But I wasn't worried about any of those perils. I was worried about the sheriff.
That's because my faith in being treated fairly by the law is lower than it should be. One of the most obvious reasons is the heavy over-representation of people who look like me in prisons all over the land. But so far, in over 25 years, none of the three men who have been sheriffs in this county have found reason to take an interest in anything I'm doing.
The chief guiding lights of back-of-the-landers such as myself, Scott and Helen Nearing, reported that all they ever saw of local law enforcement in their Vermont rural area was when they happened to look up and notice a deputy's car passing by -- about once every five or six years.
It would be about the same here, except try once every twelve years. Actually I've seen a little more than that of the various sheriffs, because they have to run for office, and for a while my wife and I were active in the county's Democratic Party.
I got to thinking about sheriffs because recently, in her "Collective Sigh" weblog, Andante ran an extremely interesting three-part exposé about a rogue sheriff in her part of North Carolina, the self-proclaimed "toughest sheriff in America," a man named Gerald Hege, and I highly recommend it to you.
That got me to thinking about the second sheriff that we've had during my time here in Nelson County, Virginia. He was the complete opposite of Andante's guy, and the rest of this post is a slight elaboration of a comment that I entered on her site. I hope she doesn't mind. I have always liked telling people about this man.
His name was Ron Wood. He looked just like that sheriff that was in the American Express TV ads some years ago, standing sternly by while the unlucky speeders that he had caught were calling home for money to pay their fines. Wood had all that big, bluff appearance of a sterotypical tough Southern sheriff, though in reality he was the friendliest guy imaginable.
Wherever Wood showed up, no matter what the company, he invariably shook hands with all the men he could reach, and he hugged all the women -- at length. I am confident that he spent time standing by the side of roads and waving at all the pickup trucks that went by, because I saw him do that once.
A neighbor who worked in the police department in a city nearby spoke of how Wood came to pick up a prisoner. He greeted all the police there in his usual extra friendly fashion, but the city police were taken a little aback when Wood greeted the prisoner in exactly the same way!
Wood had a reputation for being slow to make arrests, and political opponents tried to use his "poor" arrest record against him but failed badly. Instead he would try to get people to work out their differences amicably, and there was no negative correlation between his arrest record and the crime rate in his area.
Unfortunately heart trouble took Sheriff Ron Wood out of here way too early. It was a big loss for the county and the world.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 6:34 AM
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