For many years Tex was the cop in Mt. Holly.  This was his home. 

Picture by author

40° 6′50.94″N  77°11′23.59″W

In a time when two way radios gobbled electricity and were expensive he had a cord for his home to the location at the front of his home.  When not on patrol he parked directly in front of his home.  The cord had a speaker line to the house so he could hear the radio and a power line to charge the battery to keep the radio working and the battery up so it was live when he needed to go.  He came home, plugged in the car and unplugged it when he left.  There were no scanners and a second radio for the home would have been prohibitively expensive.  I am not sure who set this up for him but I would bet one of the ham radio operators in town, possibly Ed Boise or Ron Pompeo may have set this up for him.  Tex was tough but he knew the town, what was going on, and made good contact with the townspeople and particularly the youth.  It was not unusual for him to get hot dogs and sodas to a couple times a year and have the kids from around over.  Let’s face it, there are all kinds of police programs today that the shrinks and liberals have spent millions creating and Tex was forty years ahead of them.   But then, he tried things and did what worked.  He didn’t have any alphabet soup behind his name but he had good experience.

Tex patrolled the area, spending a lot of time at the 34/94 split watching for stop sign runners.  I always thought that was wasted time till one night shortly after I got my license someone ran the stop sign.  I was headed south at the intersection and I nearly hit him.  After that I considered anything that reduced that menace a worthwhile use of his time and even more so a few weeks later when it happened again when I was headed north.  Let’s face it, it wasn’t entrapment.  He was sitting in plain sight.  This picture shows the place he sat which is now a driveway of a home.