Cletus retired from the Highway Patrol as a lieutenant. He remembers some amusing incidents from patrolling. Like the Yankee who crossed a double-yellow line while passing a tractor.

Cletus allowed as how "there was a hill facing the driver as he passed the tractor, and he got back in his lane just in time to avoid a head-on collision."

Cletus wrote a ticket and asked the New Jersey man for the $20 bond which is required for such an offense. The man refused.

"I’m not giving you one red cent out here on the highway," the man snapped back. "I demand to see a judge!"

"Fine with me," said Cletus, "follow me, the judge is just a couple miles down this road." Cletus led the man to the home of the magistrate.

"Magistrate L.W. Smith was out behind his house when we pulled into the driveway," Cletus recalls. The driver looked around and asked, "Where’s the courthouse?"

Cletus explained that the judge held court in town on Tuesdays. "This is Thursday. The judge’ll hear your case right here, right now."

The Trooper and the Yankee walked across plowed furrows until they caught up with Judge Smith, who was out plowing with a mule and a sub-soiler.

"There was no black robe," Cletus said, "the judge was wearing bib-overalls, a wide-brimmed straw hat, and big ol’ clodhoppers."

The judge halted the mule and laced the reins around a plow handle. Out there in a freshly plowed field, the judge swore in both men.

Cletus explained what happened out on the two-lane road. Then the judge looked at the New Jersey guy and asked, "What’s your version?"

The man gave a lengthy explanation, describing the urgency of his return to New Jersey. The judge listened patiently, then said, "Guilty! That’ll be twenty dollars. Leave the money on top of the well in the back yard and put a rock on it so it don’t blow away."