Thursday, December 26, 2019

101 Things #40 - Pick Up That Star

The Internet is dominated by Americans and naturally many of the ideas for bucket-lists emanate from the New World. Today the item selected for a little light derision could only have been dreamed up on the other side of the Atlantic, but be that as it may, it is a worthy addition to my anti-bucket-list compendium, 101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die. The Fully Lived website thinks it a good idea to

Become a small-town sheriff.

I beg to differ.

We don't have sheriffs in England any more (I think there may be some survivors in Scotland). Here, of course, we automatically associate it with nasty, sneering men in Nottingham and forget that the origin of the word - Shire Reeve - simply denotes a local official.

[Boring factual bit follows] In the US it is normal for towns and counties to elect a sheriff and it is a real job, with crime prevention, public order and administration of court orders at its heart, though the powers of a sheriff vary from state to state and from town to town so it is hard to generalise. The tenure of office is four years. A sheriff may be the equivalent of the chief of police, or he may have authority in all areas of the county that do not have incorporated towns with their own police departments. [End of boring factual bit]

What do we here in the UK know (or think we know) about sheriffs? We all grew up watching westerns about brave men with tin stars who faced down innumerable bad guys in the main street of a one-horse town. We cheered on modern anti-heroes like Burt Reynolds or the Dukes of Hazard who easily outwitted the lumbering, gum-chewing, pistol-packing stooges of the corrupt mayor. We all know, thanks to Hollywood, that there are two types of sheriff: one is usually to be found lurking behind a billboard on the freeway in a police cruiser, munching doughnuts and waiting to catch anyone doing more than 1 mph over the limit; the other is an honest, hard-drinking, disrespectful loner for whom the law is all that matters and who, in the end, always gets his man (often having to go the big city to do it).

So, whether you go for the boring factual bit or the popular image, why would anyone (Americans included), want to be a sheriff just to tick it off a bucket-list? Maybe you fancy the idea of getting free coffee from every diner on the highway or of sidling up to some punk and drawling "Better haul your ass over the county line, stranger"? Perhaps you tingle at the thought of the DA telling you it's time to take off the kid gloves and load up the ol' pump-action shotgun? Or do you just want to be able to wear a cowboy hat as part of your job?

Note that the proposal is to do your sheriffing [Surely that is not a word? Ed] in a small town. That makes a sort of sense, as big towns probably have more regular police forces and are less likely to employ sheriffs, and even more sense when you remember that big towns are where you are going to get the drug cartels, the murders and the muggers. The small town, with its single road junction marked by one blinking traffic light, its General Store and white-washed chapel, its cluster of outlying wood-framed houses and just a couple of gas stations on the road to the interstate, that's where you want to be, all right. Where you can walk down Main Street, accept an apple pie here and a cheery greeting there, and go into your office, put your boots up on the beat-up old desk and wonder when the town drunk is going to be sober enough for you to let him out of the one jail cell in the corner. Trouble with all this is, do you really want to spend four years hitching up your pants on the street corner waiting for someone, just one person, please dear God, just one reckless driver to run the red light so you can bellow "Sheriff! Stop right there buddy"?

I do not find any of this sufficient inducement to leave family and home behind, try to get a Green Card and then hit on a suitable town to offer my services at the next election. Hell, I'll get my hide whupped by the incumbent sure as eggs are eggs.1


Footnote:
1. sounds better in a Texan accent.

No comments:

Post a Comment