Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Small town scare: Escaped prisoner in town?

I love living in a small town (less than 1,000). Word gets around town fast. A kindergartner went missing one winter night and within an hour half the town was mobilized and looking for him.

Our dog went missing and we knew within a few minutes someone who had seen him and where.

But it can work the same for rumors too. The other day someone in town had heard there was an escaped prisoner headed our way. One person told another and so on until it showed up on Facebook. When I saw it, I was 45 minutes away and my son was at home with my mom. ACK!

So I immediately called them and of course couldn't get them on the phone and was imagining them in the clutches of the depraved mad man and was about to send my father-in-law over to find them when finally Mom called back.

So I had her go inside and lock all the doors, but not before she talked to a kid hanging out at the neighbors' house who was the son of the local highway patrolman, who said, "Yeah, my dad told me." But he was not at all concerned.

Hmmmmm. This was the first clue.

As it turned out, it wasn't exactly an escaped prisoner headed for our town. It was a parole violator who was somewhere in the area.

But it did make for an interesting afternoon.

11 comments:

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    1. I know it! Everything gets around town, rumor or not!

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  2. We had a similar scare in the small town where I grew up, but since it was Ossining, NY, people tended to take such things more seriously!

    I had a chance to revisit my little town a while back (having left there when I was 8 I didn't remember a whole lot about it), I was shocked to see that Sing Sing Prison was only a few blocks away from our neighborhood!

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    1. Wow, now that would be pretty creepy to have a prison so close by. Yeah, if you heard the words "escaped prisoner" you'd run for cover, I'm sure. I still don't know exactly what happened here, but all seems to be okay (for now)

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  3. Oh phew at least it was just a parole violation and not an escaped prisoner! PHEW!

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    1. Still not good, but better than a deranged escaped prisoner headed to find somebody in town! YIKES!

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  4. There was a prison break in our small town when I was a teen. The two prisoners actually came through our back yard while my mother and I were sitting on the back steps. My brother was playing in the woods, where the escapees were headed. Imagine my mother's panic! The cops searched the area. They found the convicts, thank God, and tagging along in the clutches of another cop was my brother, safe and sound. Great story...brought back a lot of memories!

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    1. Good gracious, that's scary! Wow. Your poor Mom. That's like every mom's worst fear, I think, or at least among the top 5: kid in woods with escaped prisoners on the way.

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  5. Rumours and communication can take on lives of their own, can't they? Thanks for sharing, and I'm glad everything turned out well.

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    1. Oh my, yes, especially in a small town. It can bounce around from one end of town to the other in just a few minutes sometimes! We take everything with a grain of salt, well, I should do that but I didn't with the escaped prisoner, LOL.

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