Lester adopted a shaggy dog.

In order to tell this shaggy dog story as historically accurate as possible, it should be explained that a hungry, mangy, little shaggy puppy found its way onto Lester’s front porch, curled up in a corner to take a nap, and remained a constant part of Lester’s life for the better part of the next dozen years. It should also be explained that, although the puppy ceased to be hungry, mangy, and little, it remained shaggy.

On one occasion, while heading home from the grocery store with five bags filled with non-essential, high-caloric, nutrition-lacking, big college football binge-watching junk food, Lester found himself and his junk food laden car in the midst of a slow-speed police chase that traversed west-bound on Interstate 94, through three counties, two states and a rest area.

It involved a bad guy (driving a 1998 Buick Skylark), a whole bunch of constabulary types (driving much better vehicles than a 1998 Buick Skylark), and Lester (in his Prius).

Lester was headed home with the aforementioned five bags of TV football fare, when he decided to jump on the expressway, because travelling at speeds of 75 mph was frowned upon when driving on two-lane county roads.

Although Lester had heard rumors that a Prius might be able to attain speeds of up to 75 mph (and secretly wanted to find out if the rumors were true), he performed his drive time calculations by factoring the high cost of auto insurance due to a speeding ticket, against a kickoff in 20 minutes and the melt rate of butter pecan ice cream.

Merging carefully, purposely and at a speed that signaled, “Get out of the way — ice cream on board,” Lester ramped onto the highway and inadvertently joined a police chase in progress. No one could blame Lester for not realizing he had wedged himself behind a bad guy surrounded by 15 squad cars — the flashing red and blue lights were distracting.

As mentioned earlier, this was a slow-speed chase. This was not a limited production Alpha-Romeo sports car, careening down the interstate at break neck speeds, smashing through road blocks and evading capture by the skillful out-maneuvering of every squad car in a “Blues Brothers” movie. This was a police chase akin to O.J. Simpson in the slow white Bronco (no…not John Elway), except without the helicopters and wall-to-wall news coverage. This was one guy, being more-or-less escorted down three lanes of interstate highway, by a cordon of cops, at 48 miles per hour.

Of course, Lester was stuck in the middle of the pack.

Once ensconced deep within the swarm of chase vehicles, there was nothing Lester could do but cruise along at 48 mph, miss his exit (and several more), cross a state line, and wonder if he could reach back, get his hand in one of the bags of goodies, and grab the sack of bridge mix without colliding with an Indiana State Trooper. Eventually, the squad cars were able to force — well, actually, “nudge” might be a better word — the bad guy off the expressway and onto a rest area exit ramp.

The ensuing scene was reminiscent of every police drama on television — 18 cops, one pair of handcuffs, and a face-full of asphalt later — the entire incident had come to a peaceful solution.

Except (there’s always the “except” part, isn’t there?) for a little Prius surrounded by a bunch of flashing lights. Once the bad guy had been taken into custody, a burly sheriff’s deputy approached Lester’s car.

As Lester timidly rolled down his window, the deputy took a close look at Lester, the five bags of munchies in his back seat, the occupant of the passenger seat, and said, “Is that your dog? He’s not that shaggy.”

Larry Wilson is a mostly lifelong resident of Niles. His optimistic “glass full to overflowing” view of life shapes his writing. His essays stem from experiences, compilations and recollections from friends and family. Wilson touts himself as “a dubiously licensed teller of tall tales, sworn to uphold the precept of ‘It’s my story; that’s the way I’m telling it.’” He can be reached at wflw@hotmail.com.