On a beautiful summer afternoon my girlfriend and I were returning from a Civil War dig near Richmond Virginia. Not having to be anywhere in a hurry we had packed a picnic lunch and headed up I-95 in a leisurely manner. After about 35 minutes into our trip we were looking for a scenic roadside park when, the dreaded blue and red lights appeared in the rear-view mirror.

Pulling over quickly and coming to a stop, the Virginia State trooper pulled in behind. Now I-95 was a known drug mule route making it’s way all the way to New York and beyond. Might be the reason for the stop because my car was in perfect working order, and I wasn’t speeding. Officer Klumpky appears at my window asking for my license registration and proof of insurance. I pull our my wallet and amass the documents and hand them over. I ask why he pulled me over and he just mumbled something inaudible.

Then comes the usual question (where are you headed-where are you coming from–is this your car–how old your girlfriend is-and a few more dumb questions) which I refuse to answer. He seemed to get a little mad at me then and asked the same questions again and I refused to answer again.

Then comes the sixty-four-dollar question, from out of the blue CAN I SEARCH YOUR CAR?. To which I promptly reply NO. The stunned look on his face made us both laugh, which made him madder. I asked him why he wanted to search the car and he replied it” just routine, do you have anything to hide? Yo which I said no. Then why can’t I search? Do you have a warrant–dead silence. I can always get a warrant so I said okay get one. He stared at me like I was speaking Greek, then said it could take an hour or so, so why don’t you just let me search? I said no, get the warrant. Now he was really mad.

Waiting for him to get the warrant we decided to have our lunch, minus the beers of course, so out comes the cooler from the back seat and we proceeded to have our picnic lunch. Finally two more state troopers arrived with the warrant in hand. Waving it around the started to search when I asked to read the warrant. Now the other two troopers were getting mad too. I pretended to read the warrant` ever so slowly Page after page after page. It took me almost ten minutes to get to the last page that said why they wanted to search the car. In big bold letters it read DRUGS.

I hope you all don’t mind if we eat while you search, and make sure you put my car back the way you found it when you’re done. They searched and we ate. forty-five minutes later they finally gave up the ghost. They didn’t make to much of a mess. As I was packing up the cooler the original trooper came over and said we were free to go, no drugs, he said no drugs. Then he said to us, If you knew there were no drugs in the car why wouldn’t’ you just let me search it. I told him that we were not in Nazi Germany we were in the United States of America, and it is one of my rights to be secure in my person, papers, and effects. I also told him the fifty drug traffickers probably are halfway to NY by now