The South Dakota Bumper Sticker Police

 

The truck with all its bumper stickers, circa South Dakota, 2015

I am not a fast driver. It is one of the traits of my dad, like premature hair loss or a habit of filling barns with antique knick knacks, that appeared a little earlier than I had hoped. I tend to drive just a hair under the speed limit, mostly because I am rarely in a hurry. In fact I have been pulled over twice for going under the speed limit. In our modern world, driving slowly is suspicious, or so a friendly South Dakota police officer once informed me. So are bumper stickers, no matter what they say. 

An old friend shared a song with me the other day that brought to mind a memorable experience with the South Dakota Bumper Sticker Police (SDBSP for short). We were headed north on I-29 near Brookings, South Dakota on a blustery but sunny August afternoon. The posted speed limit was 80; I was driving a hair over 70. I had the windows down, arm dangling, Marshall Tucker Band turned up to max volume. My scruffy hair was blowing in the wind. Just out for a leisurely midwest cruise, when suddenly the heartstopping whoop-whoop and blinding lights appeared in my mirror. Nonchalantly, I coasted to the side of the highway, while my passenger calmly removed the necessary documents from the glovebox.

This was to be my first of four run-ins with the bumper sticker police. I knew I wasn’t speeding. In fact, in sixteen years of driving, I have been escorted to the roadside by law enforcement at least sixteen times that I recall and just two of those were for speeding, and both those instances were in the gray area. Ironically, most of these occurrences happened when I had Vermont plates on my truck and was outside of Vermont, an uncanny coincidence. But then, I was displaying bumper stickers, so I may have been asking for it.

Where I come from, bumper stickers are expressions of self. Everyone has bumper stickers advertising their favorite bands, favorite sports teams, favorite omniscient beings or favorite punny and witty slogans for motivation and sarcasm. You can learn a lot about a person from their bumper stickers, like where their kids go to school, where they go on vacation, where they stand on issues from free speech to foreign policy. Some people show more bumper stickers than paint on their personal vehicles. I personally had stickers advertising my love of Phish, the Foo Fighters, Telluride Mountain Resort, TedXBozeman, and Glacier National Park. But the sticker that repeatedly caught the eye of the bumper sticker police was “Keep Vermont Weird.” In South Dakota, a sticker like that was the equivalent of lighting a joint and blowing the smoke through the SDBSP air conditioning vents. It was a red flag, even if I didn’t smoke at all.  

Officer Haggard (not his real name) walked calmly to my passenger window, put his arm on the roof and leaned down like they teach you to do in the movies. He slid his sunglasses down his nose and asked “Where are we headed today?” Without waiting for an answer, he firmly grasped my papers and asked me to join him in his cruiser, a matte black Dodge charger without a single bumper sticker. He was polite, yet stone-faced. He opened the passenger door of the cruiser like a valet and I slid into the leather seat surrounded by all of his policeman attire. Through the windshield, I could see the worried face of my passenger who had, in less than a minute, gone from Can’t You See by Marshall Tucker to Uneasy Rider by Charlie Daniels. 

The conversation started as you would expect. Lots of silence. Questions like “I see you have been pulled over before” and “What brings you out this way?” The key question was “do your bumper stickers obscure your vision (i.e. are you high as a kite on the mary jane?” Officer Haggard clearly wanted a confession, so I was truthful. I wiped my stringy hair from my clear and sober eyes and gave him my life story. Vermont, Montana, school, girls, high school football, favorite color, the whole thing. It was clear that I was not under the influence and the ice broke immediately. Pretty soon, we were chatting as minutes went by; lots of minutes. He finished up my paperwork and we kept talking, sharing stories of various vacations, best barbeque in Sioux Falls, dangerous curves in the Black Hills, the prospects of the Minnesota Vikings this season. On we went, before I realized that my passenger was still in the truck and was probably curious if not a bit worried. Officer Haggard handed me back my papers and we parted like old friends with a handshake and a “drive safe now, ya hear!”

I was feeling cheerful, having made a new acquaintance. But when I got back in my driver’s seat, the mood was not quite so calm. From her perspective, I had been abducted for no good reason by another overreaching member of law enforcement and held for an unnecessarily long time. And that was a fair point of view. It certainly was a memorable Friday on I-29, even seven years later when she shared “But You Like Country Music” by Sunny Sweeney and Brennen Leigh with me. 

I am fully aware of the significance of traffic stops in America, particularly in the past few years. Profiling is a real thing, as are the videos and national outrage that inevitably follow. I am not trying to compare my experience to those that have been highly and rightly publicized over the past couple years. There is a lot of racist and ugly profiling out there. I have been profiled repeatedly for my license plates, my bumper stickers (which honestly are not all that controversial or political in any way), and the stereotype of being a long haired hippie freak. Thankfully, in all of these situations, I have been treated with the utmost respect and often have parted on cordial terms with a member of whichever states bumper sticker police have waylaid me. I know this isn’t the case for everyone and I hope this is remedied right away. This instance was my first of four run-ins with the SDBSP, and they have a record of each time and place they have stopped me, from Belle Fourche to Sioux Falls. They remind me each time we meet.

Funnily enough, since I cut my hair and put Montana plates on my truck, I have not been stopped once by the bumper sticker police. Maybe it is because I accidentally smashed the back window that had the Keep Vermont Weird sticker and replaced it with an Alan Jackson, Hotter than a Hoochie Coochie sticker. Since that transition, I have been pulled over four times on suspicion of DUI, despite being completely sober… so maybe I have just traded one stereotype for another.