Black and White Book Blog Tour and #LoneStarLit

AUTHOR BEN H. ENGLISH’S

FAVORITE QUOTES FROM

BLACK AND WHITE: TALES OF THE TEXAS HIGHWAY PATROL

    “A word to the reader at this early junction. If you cannot or will not grasp the fact that a human being, or an organization, should not be judged out of its own time frame and in the totality of exigencies, then please close these pages and move on. Your wished-for utopia does not exist, at least not on this plane of existence.”

***

     “I used to say that Interstate 10 was the greatest show on earth, and behind the wheel of a black and white provided for the best seat in the house. There was ample reason to make that claim too, as about when you thought you’d seen it all, something new would start your direction.”

***

“The white four door began to take the off ramp, then whipped back to the interstate again. Now we were nearing a combination bridge, dual overpass and entrance ramp for west bound traffic, guardrails hard against the pavement on each side. I swallowed hard and crawled up on the steering wheel, trying to figure some options and literally praying that we would make it to the other end.”

***

“As I said, ours was a profession habitually filled with ignorance to any of our successes, and yet constantly made aware of any possible oversight or mistake.”

***

     “Some distance past was a black and blue conventional cab truck-tractor, laying on the driver side and further on an overturned semi-trailer. Excited voices were all around running the gamut of confusion, frustration, despair, comforting, full of anger and near unnatural screams that made one think of a tortured animal driven to insanity, rather than a human being.”

***

     “After all, what could possibly go wrong over a simple traffic citation?”

***

“That night after my shift I laid in bed staring at a dark ceiling, my mind in another dark place while searching for even darker answers. There were none forthcoming, and before drifting off into a troubled sleep I decided it was probably just as well.”

***

      “Many otherwise sane, level headed people have an inexplicable fascination with speed. Mind you I am not throwing any rocks from the proverbial glass house, as I have suffered from the same affliction for as far back as can be remembered.”

***

     “At that precise moment everything went into slow motion, kind of like an action sequence from a Sam Peckinpah movie. I still don’t remember palming my pistol, the Sig P226 just appeared in my left hand with the sights lined up on the driver’s nose. Off to my left, I heard the doomsday echo of a load of triple ought slamming home as Ryan worked the shotgun.”

***

“Or you never really know how badly you want to be a highway patrolman until you make a stop in the middle of the night, some thirty miles from town. There are four guys inside the car, and at least one needs to go to jail. But he, or they, don’t want to.”

***

     “My story is not unusual among my comrades in arms, we did the same job and faced the same challenges. I just happened to be one who sat down and wrote about a few of our shared experiences.”