The Face in The Mirror

When I decided to attend the University of South Carolina at Spartanburg, which is now called The University of South Carolina Upstate, I had to find a place to live. There were no dorms for the school at that time. My father had decided that we would move the trailer that he owned from Lee Street in Iva to Spartanburg.

 I had to refurbish this trailer. My father had different people work on it. He had installed new vinyl floor covering and put some different used appliances in the place. In the main bathroom there were two sliding mirrors that covered the medicine cabinet. One of these was broken and the other one was just plain nasty looking because some of the silver on it was missing. I had two new mirrors cut by Kay’s Glass in Anderson and had them in my back seat that night as I went to town.

A friend of mine and I went out to a movie and to eat and were coming back from that. It was late at night. Years ago I would have left the next part out of the telling. I am not proud of this part but I think it is important to know this.

My friend and I were bored. We saw a driveway reflector at the end of a driveway and I pulled over and my friend plucked it up. We went around a little bit and gathered up about a half dozen or so of these. Then we decided that we should get rid of them so we threw them out the window. This was at the corner of Wesley Drive and Hayes Road. I drove to the intersection of Hayes Road and Flat Rock Road and turned right onto Flat Rock Road. Almost immediately a car pulled up on my tail and turned on his bright lights. He rode on my bumper for a while and then I heard my friendr say, “Watch this.”

My friend had turned around to the back seat and got one of those two mirrors. He began aiming the reflection back at the car behind us. Shortly there was an extra light in that mirror. This light was blue and was flashing.

I pulled over and I noticed that my friend had crawled into the floor of the car. I told him to get up. We had pulled over in front of his uncle’s house and very close to his grandparents house. We got out of the car and were met by two Anderson County Sheriff’s Deputies who had just walked out of a very bad movie about the South.

They started in playing good cop bad cop. The one cop asked what we were doing out that late. I told him we were going home. He asked where home was and I told him. He asked why did I have a mirror in the car and I told him. Then the other cop, the bad one, spoke up and said, I think we should haul them in and have their parents come and get them.” He asked what if a woman had been in the car behind us with kids in the car. The other one said that no they patrolled there all the time and that they would just keep an eye out for us. They went back and forth and then let us go.

My friend and I were happy to be let go and then we went to his house to talk. We sat in his front yard and it was there it dawned on us that we had been played. First of all we should not have to tell any law enforcement person why we were out in a residential area. Secondly it was my business why I had a mirror in the car and finally if a woman had been behind us with kids in the car and if she was stupid enough to drive on someone’s bumper with her bright lights on then she would be an accident waiting to happen.


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