In the Spring of 1969 I was driving home from Nantasket to the Blue Hills in the 1968 Volkwagen Beetle.
Outside Hingham Center was a traffic light blinking yellow. That day was no different, however a town police cruiser flicked on his siren and I pulled over to the shoulder. The officer approached my car and I rolled down the window.
“You know you ran that red light?”
“What red light?” I turned around and saw the signal was yellow. “That light has always yellow. I’ve never seen in red.”
“Well, it was ten thirty seconds ago. Let me see your license.”
He wrote up a ticket for running a red light. I took it from him and pointed to the light.
“It’s still blinking yellow.”
“You wanna spend the night at the station. No, I didn’t think so. Get out of here.”
I obeyed him, but returned to watch the light for ten minutes.
It never went red.
At home I explained the traffic stop to my father.
The ticket was $25. I said I would pay it.
“Are you telling the truth?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then we will fight it.”
Two weeks later my father and I showed up at Hingham Court dressed in jacket in tie. The officer was there. I smiled at him, thinking I would get off, since my father and I had waited at the light for ten minutes without it ever changing to red.
The two of us sat in the front bench.
The court officer announced the judge. We rose for his Honor and he motioned for everyone to sit down.
Ten seconds later the door opened and two cops led in four teens chained together. I recognized two of them and someone behind us mumbled that they had fired a shotgun at the judge’s vacation house. The two boys waved and said ‘hello’. The cop smiled at me and my father said, “Plead guilty.”
Guilt is not all about being guilty, but yesterday a New York judge has ordered President Donald Trump to personally pay $2 million to settle the state attorney general’s civil lawsuit against his now-defunct charitable organization, The Donald J. Trump Foundation.
Looking at the above family photo I would have to say all of them look guilty as sin.
Of course the DA had originally asked for $6.5 million, so looking guilty can also look like success for a conman and his family.
And he isn’t even a Roma.