Greys & Things

I haven’t always lived in the country.  I was born in St. Louis and lived there until I was four.  Our house burned down and we moved to the country.  I moved back to the city when I married and then we moved to a smaller town for 13 years. We moved to this rural area five years ago.  

We purchased a scanner when we lived in the smaller town.  I enjoyed hearing everything that was going on around me with the police scanner.  After listening for a while, you begin to recognize the officer’s voices.  I thought when we moved out here, there would be not be much activity on the scanner.  I was wrong.  I turned it on the other day and was shocked to hear how much is going on around me.  I only see the mailman, my one neighbor and on rare occasions, the UPS man, so it is easy to slip into your own world and forget that there is a world outside of “two greyhound town”.  It is amazing how much police activity is occurring here.  I’m 20 minutes from the nearest town, so that is what surprised me.

If you have never listened to a police scanner, I highly recommend it.  It can be very funny at times.  There was one time that I will never forget.  The police chief came on and asked if anyone had written any tickets for the day.  He said the new computer system was up and he wanted to test it.  An officer responded and said “No, I haven’t written any tickets, but give me a minute and I’ll write one.”   I felt sorry for the poor driver that was going to get pulled over so the computer system could be tested. 

There are times when you are pulled into the action that the police are experiencing and it can go on for hours.  An officer was trying to catch someone who ran from him and the officer ended up getting stuck in the snow.  Several other officers were called in to assist, but after two hours, the suspect was still at large.  I’m not sure what happened in that case because I had to turn off the scanner because I needed to work.

Do you have a scanner and if so, have you ever heard anything funny on it?