Inspector Your-Locked-Homes Is on the Case

By now you know that Val is a bit paranoid. Nothing wrong with that when you live in the middle of nowhere, with emergency services just a phone call (if it will go through) and 15 minutes away.

Hick was just telling me a couple days ago that his Facebook group of Out-Here residents was clamoring about a strange pickup truck driving around. They didn't recognize the people or the blue and gray truck, which had Illinois license plates. It had been spotted on several of our gravel roads that branch off and dead-end. I, myself, have not seen it. Nor has Hick.

Here's the thing. Nobody should be driving around in here. It smacks of casing out the homes for return visits in the dead of night or broad daylight, to help themselves to items good for resale. We've had lawnmowers taken, and our downhill neighbors have had 4-wheelers stolen out of their barn. Not recently, but it has happened.

When I left for town Sunday, shortly after noon, I spied a white sedan parked down by the creek. I'd not seen it out here before. Our gravel road is private, not public. People park on it to wade in the creek, or dump trash, or perhaps steal mail, or abandon animals, or let their dogs poop. Some use it as a short cut to shave five miles off a drive to the northern part of the county.

Two people were sitting in the car. A woman behind the wheel, and a shaved-head dude riding (well, SITTING) shotgun, his bare foot propped in the window of his open door. They were not wading, not trapping minnows, not fishing. Phone service down there is nonexistent. No mail on Sundays. I could imagine no good reason for them to be there. Especially when I returned from town, some 45 minutes later, and they were STILL THERE. If they were taking a short cut, it was surely costing them a lot of time.

I called my knight in dented armor, he having parked his white horse up at his Storage Unit Store for the day. I basically wanted to know if he was on the way home, so he could take a look at those folks. Maybe get a picture of their license plate, which was black-and-white, not Missouri colors, but most likely Illinois. I didn't stop to get one myself. I suppose I could have pulled in behind them to snap a pic. Who are THEY to get out and ask ME what I'm doing there, anyway? Not that they would have. I just don't feel comfortable possibly agitating possible drug addicts all by myself in an isolated area without phone service.

It's possible, you know, that these folks were shooting heroin. Our county is rife with it, deaths almost every month, the drug and its paraphernalia picked up often in traffic stops.

Alas, Hick was still selling, and planning to head for Lowe's when he closed, for paint to beautify his new freight container garage glorified hoarder shed.

By the time he got home around 3:30, that white car was gone. I guess it wasn't somebody's day to die of a heroin overdose in Outer Backroads.