46 Miles Per Hour

In the early morning hour of January 3rd . . . (a Saturday) actor/playwright Sam Shepard was pulled over by police officers in Normal, Illinois. The author of True West and A Lie of the Mind was going 46 miles per hour at the time—roughly 10 miles per hour over the speed limit. This in and of itself was no big deal. The fact that his blood alcohol content was rumored to be something like 0.175. Drunken driving is, of course, a pretty serious offense and nothing to be taken lightly even if it’s a lot more commonplace than it should be. Oddly enough, though, drunken driving doesn’t seem entirely out of place for Shepherd. The talented actor/playwright seems like the type of guy who would be drinking in Illinois on his way back to his home in Kentucky from Michigan. I’m not sure why. A strange bit of trivia that I can’t quite get my mind around is the fact that Shepherd was driving something as unromantic as a Chevy Blazer when he got pulled over. FOR some reason I have difficulty picturing Shepherd driving something like that. An old Volkswagen . . . a Lincoln Continental . . . even a beat-up, old Ford pick-up I could accept, but a Chevy Blazer? For some reason, that’s just a little too strange . . .

and why 46 miles per hour? . . .