Most wanted
This Labor Day weekend we spent with my family in Northwestern Pennsylvania. The little town where I grew up is a rather quiet town, but the monotony of peace was interrupted several times by sirens and racing troopers speeding from one side of town to the other. All weekend around our town, as well as many others throughout this part of Pennsylvania and Western New York, everyone is looking for this guy who escaped from a county jail with a can opener in April. For months he's been something of a joke, with people selling t-shirts that say "Run, Bucky, Run" and "Free Bucky." However, now he is a real threat as one of the New York State troopers he shot last week died.
Despite the fact that they have been on alert for him in Pennsylvania these past several weeks, they hadn't been any confirmed sightings of him, only "alleged." One of the problems is that he has a long pony-tail and a scruffy moustache. Do you know how many people around there look like that? And besides, if he were really crossing the state line, wouldn't the FBI or the U.S. Marshals have been called in? As of this weekend, they hadn't. So even on Sunday when we had a get-together at my aunts' house and we heard the sirens, it amused us.
One of my parents' neighbors was sitting out the other day and told us a detailed account of a real Bucky sighting outside of my hometown. Apparently this guy had been stying in Ludlow all week, and someone who went to high school with my sisters had been housing him, caught by the police because he tried to report a stolen firearm, but Bucky still got away. There were more details, but as none of this appeared in the news in the next day or so, and what I was reading and seeing had this guy anywhere between Hamburg and Utica, I chalked a lot of it up to rumor and the desire for small-town people for their small-world to be more important in some bigger picture than it really is. On Tuesday I was getting coffee and the subject of Bucky and the frequent sirens this weekend came up and I mentioned that I had heard he was in Ludlow. The woman at the shop laughed, and said none of it was true; some local character who goes by the moniker T-Bone was stealing corn in someone's field and someone else thought it might be Bucky. End of story. We laughed.
As I drove up to Olean, New York, to do a little shopping, I saw the state troopers with their rifles checking every vehicle leaving New York, but not entering. I figured they must know more about Bucky's movements than I would have heard, and if they were on that side of 219, he must not have been in Pennsylvania at all. In Olean helicopters criss-crossed the sky, a reminder that someone was being sought. We ate lunch at a Lebanese restaurant and some of the waitresses were talking to another customer about Bucky. They never said he had been in Pennsylvania, but he probably wasn't in Olean either, they did say. They laughed.
When I was driving back to my parents' though, the troopers had moved to the other side, checking cars leaving Pennsylvania. I chalked it up in my head to something more procedural, because hadn't I read that morning that he jumped off a train near Buffalo?
Wednesday night I got home to Pittsburgh. I checked the news. This is easy because you can type "Bucky" in google news and this will be all the news you get. Suddenly, things I had heard over the weekend were true. He was in Ludlow for a week and a half! CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times--they all have to be scrambling to find a map detailed enough to show them where Ludlow is.
Now he is on the FBI's and the U.S. Marshals' radar, finally. Perhaps with that much manpower in the region, they are going to find him.
Despite the fact that they have been on alert for him in Pennsylvania these past several weeks, they hadn't been any confirmed sightings of him, only "alleged." One of the problems is that he has a long pony-tail and a scruffy moustache. Do you know how many people around there look like that? And besides, if he were really crossing the state line, wouldn't the FBI or the U.S. Marshals have been called in? As of this weekend, they hadn't. So even on Sunday when we had a get-together at my aunts' house and we heard the sirens, it amused us.
One of my parents' neighbors was sitting out the other day and told us a detailed account of a real Bucky sighting outside of my hometown. Apparently this guy had been stying in Ludlow all week, and someone who went to high school with my sisters had been housing him, caught by the police because he tried to report a stolen firearm, but Bucky still got away. There were more details, but as none of this appeared in the news in the next day or so, and what I was reading and seeing had this guy anywhere between Hamburg and Utica, I chalked a lot of it up to rumor and the desire for small-town people for their small-world to be more important in some bigger picture than it really is. On Tuesday I was getting coffee and the subject of Bucky and the frequent sirens this weekend came up and I mentioned that I had heard he was in Ludlow. The woman at the shop laughed, and said none of it was true; some local character who goes by the moniker T-Bone was stealing corn in someone's field and someone else thought it might be Bucky. End of story. We laughed.
As I drove up to Olean, New York, to do a little shopping, I saw the state troopers with their rifles checking every vehicle leaving New York, but not entering. I figured they must know more about Bucky's movements than I would have heard, and if they were on that side of 219, he must not have been in Pennsylvania at all. In Olean helicopters criss-crossed the sky, a reminder that someone was being sought. We ate lunch at a Lebanese restaurant and some of the waitresses were talking to another customer about Bucky. They never said he had been in Pennsylvania, but he probably wasn't in Olean either, they did say. They laughed.
When I was driving back to my parents' though, the troopers had moved to the other side, checking cars leaving Pennsylvania. I chalked it up in my head to something more procedural, because hadn't I read that morning that he jumped off a train near Buffalo?
Wednesday night I got home to Pittsburgh. I checked the news. This is easy because you can type "Bucky" in google news and this will be all the news you get. Suddenly, things I had heard over the weekend were true. He was in Ludlow for a week and a half! CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times--they all have to be scrambling to find a map detailed enough to show them where Ludlow is.
Now he is on the FBI's and the U.S. Marshals' radar, finally. Perhaps with that much manpower in the region, they are going to find him.
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