The First Speeding Ticket
Field Note: Sometimes the slowest miles take us the farthest.
Ever gotten a speeding ticket?
I’m not suggesting we all do, but let’s be honest, it’s almost a rite of passage.
I was sixteen, newly licensed, and feeling invincible. Three months later in Huntsville, Alabama, those throbbing, unmistakable blue lights strobed in my Chevrolet’s cabin like an X-ray on the fritz. My heart sank. Sweat poured. Time froze.
“License and registration, please.”
On 3 October 1903, Dr Horatio Nelson Jackson got a speeding ticket in Burlington, Vermont, for driving faster than six miles an hour. Five dollars plus costs. Hardly a headline... unless you know what came before.
Months earlier, in a wood-panelled club in San Francisco, a wager was made. A cherry-red Winton car called The Vermont. A doctor with more conviction than experience. A young mechanic named Sewall Crocker. And a bulldog called Bud, who would soon ride shotgun in a pair of goggles, learning to brace for every bump.
They rattled across America on dirt tracks and rail bridges, patched tyres by lamplight, begged bearings from farmers, and wrote home when they could. Sixty-three days later, they rolled into New York City, the first to drive coast to coast. Which makes that little October fine for speeding read like a grin from history. After deserts, floods, and broken axles, the only thing that stopped him was a town speed limit.
Dr Jackson wasn’t chasing glory; he was following a nudge. The bet wasn’t about money; it was more about meaning. He sensed a calling before he had a plan. And like most worthwhile callings, it began with one small, foolhardy, “Yes.”
There were no highways, only ruts, swamps, and stubborn ground. We love stories of triumph, but the more profound lessons often emerge from the mud. Jackson and Crocker were baptised in dust and delay.
They were rescued by strangers, humbled by setbacks, and helped by towns that had never seen a car. The journey became a shared act of grace, every blacksmith and farmer doing their small part to keep them going.
It was a reminder that God often hides His best work in plain sight, along the roadside, in the hands of ordinary people who simply choose to lend a helping hand, echoing the quiet urging of Hebrews not to forget to show hospitality to strangers.
Bud, the bulldog, became the calm centre of the chaos. He didn’t speak, plan, or worry. He just stayed. Maybe that’s the lesson right there.
When they finally arrived, Jackson had proved more than a wager. He had shown what faithfulness looks like when the road disappears and the map gives up its edges.
And that brings us back to the fine. After outrunning deserts, crossing rivers, and rebuilding the car piece by piece, the only thing that could stop him was the six-mile-an-hour speed limit.
The irony is perfect. It reminds us that purpose isn’t measured by speed; it’s measured by steadiness. Perhaps the goal of life isn’t to avoid every stop, but to arrive with stories, mud, and a sense of wonder, knowing that we actually made it.
Big journeys end in small places.
Keep going.