STORY
BEHIND THE BALLAD OF ROSSMO AND WELLS
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This poem became my first "publicly"
posted departmental poem. The previous poem was just within the traffic
division.
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Two young policemen were paired to
work together. The two were very eager, as is the case with all rookies,
and trying to impress everyone. Kim who was a bit of the ladies man and
always on the lookout for ladies to lavish his affection on, and Dean who
was quickly dubbed the Wild Thing for his driving.
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Dean it seems went everywhere at Mach
1. This particular day, Dean was driving when a call came in. Even though
they were a long, long ways away, Dean pointed the unit in that direction.
Witnesses swear the car was a blue streak on the way to the call. Despite
Dean’s best efforts, someone got there first and cancelled any cover units.
Not wanting the general public see him shut down all the emergency gear,
Dean hauled the unit into a high speed right turn.
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Unfortunately, he didn’t get a chance
to check the street first and never saw the paving crew laying a new asphalt
surface down. Dean left all the emergency equipment on and roared through,
churning up chunks of the newly laid street surface.
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He weaved through the traffic cones,
signs and other debris and never hit a thing or anyone and came to a stop
several blocks away. Kim said afterwards, the ride scared him so bad he
had thought of crawling into the glove compartment to hide and that it
had taken him several minutes to pry his fingernails out of the dashboard.
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For some reason, this story seemed
like a natural to do a poem about, and this is the poem that really got
my career as the departmental poet underway.
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