A couple of weekends ago I got a speeding ticket in South Carolina.
So not wanting to pay a hefty fine and get some points tossed onto my driver's license and have my insurance go up, I drove over three and a half hours each way to go to court in Manning, SC, in the hopes that I would be able to get my fine and charge reduced.
I had to drive my truck, not the Buick Regal I got the ticket with, because my wife had to have the Buick to pick up the kids. My truck is a beat-up Ford Ranger I've had since '92 and has a tape deck with only one working speaker and no A/C. Needless to say, I wasn't stoked to drive this thing to South Carolina.
Oh and SC had record temps - it was 95 degrees.
When I got to Manning, a small town off the I95 corridor, I was shocked to find out just how small a town it was and even more shocked to find out the size of traffic court.
Here's some things I found out about Manning:
- It was first settled by the French Hugenots
- 63 percent of the population today is African-American
- The median household income in $22,483
- In 2003, the population was less than 4,000
- It is equi-distance between Maine and Miami
Fascinating facts about one small town in the Southeast US no?
I can tell you that my fine was reduced to $76.50 and that my points were dropped from 4 to 2. So you can guess that making the trip to this bucolic one-horse town was worth it. But I did feel like I was a bit character in some B-movie horror flick walking around town (one block!) passing three churches, the town's post office and the town's fire station.
I heart the South...
