Hollywood’s car chases keep getting faster, louder, more explosive and destructive. Where would we be if Jason Bourne hadn’t destroyed innumerable police cars, several taxis and a few SUVs?
But my favorite car chase included a few cell phones, corn fields and an arrogant thief.
After holding up a convenience store on the Interstate highway in western Nebraska, the young man leaped into his car and raced away. As his speed zoomed over 100 mph at times, he probably assumed he could outrun the State Patrol.
Soon he had the Patrol out in full-force following him into Colorado. The driver may have realized he couldn’t outrun their radios and that reinforcements were assembling in front of him.
So, as a couple of towns flashed by, hardly blips in his vision at his speed, he swung onto an exit and headed into farm country.
Out where only corn and wheat fields swayed in the wind. That ought to be secluded enough for him to escape law enforcement.
So the driver flew down dirt roads with no worries. He’d lost his trackers.
But he didn’t understand the nature of the rural mind.
Farmers tend those corn and wheat fields. And they know the traffic on those country roads. When an unknown car flashed by at high speed, a farmer grabbed his cell phone and called a neighbor. That neighbor called a neighbor.
Before long, the sheriff was alerted as farmers tracked the car careening through the farmland through cell phone calls.
While the racing thief thought he had outsmarted law enforcement, the network of farmers calmly plotted his course and helped the sheriff lay out a plan.
think the farmers were willing to block the road with their humongous tractors but the sheriff nixed the idea. What if there was shooting?
In the end, the sheriff and his deputies blocked the road ahead and behind because they knew exactly where their man had been. And was going.
The thief who thought he had outsmarted his pursuers hadn’t counted on the creativity of some farmers and their cell phones.
