My Biggest Fan?

One of the interesting side effects of blogging and writing for a long time, sharing your opinions on controversial subjects and even veering into investigative journalism (as Mike and I tend to do from time to time) is that you irritate quite a few people. Confederate Yankee is a relatively small blog and so I'm sure we don't get a fraction of the hatred of the larger blogs, but apparently I've become interesting enough for someone to track me down.

As I left my house this morning and walked to my car, a Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck that was parked on the street several houses down, slammed into reverse, backed up into the intersection and did a right turn, backwards down the street.

Obviously, I thought that was odd, got in my car, and started down the street towards that same residential intersection, which leads to the main road. As soon as I pulled up to the intersection I saw the truck again, and the driver immediately backed up even further.

My biggest fan?

I left my neighborhood, and sure enough the truck followed a few seconds later.

I turned onto our main street and the truck was behind several other vehicles and he kept drifting over the centerline as if to keep eye contact with my vehicle. At that point I chuckled to myself, figuring that I have seen too many spy movies. Really... why would anyone want to follow me?

Nonetheless, as the truck matched me turn for turn down several more roads I though the possibility interesting enough that I thought I'd prove my suspicions silly by pulling a U-turn on a divided highway, in the middle of farmland, where there is literally no reason to do such a turn.

Sure enough, the truck made a U-turn, and accelerated to close the distance back up. This person was obviously following me, and was obviously an amateur. The truck got caught at the next traffic light and I did another U-turn (to put me back on my original course). The truck drove by, and then quickly changed lanes and ducked into a residential neighborhood, but didn't pursue me any further. I was rather obviously acting like someone trying to confirm or shake a tail, and the truck driver had enough sense to figure out that I would probably be on the phone with the police, giving them a detailed description of their vehicle... which I was.

The vehicle following me was similar to the one in the photo above, a late model Silverado of that color with the same little antenna pods on the roof. The one following me may have been an extended cab instead of the four-door crew cab, and the vehicle following me had a silver toolbox in back, and sported very dark tinted windows. Other than that, the photo above is pretty close.

I hold onto a faint hope that this was just some bizarre behavior, and perhaps a case of them mistaking me for someone else, but since I've taken it upon myself to target an alleged gunrunning ex-con and a few other folks over the years, I guess it is possible I've irritated someone enough to want to find me, and perhaps share their displeasure with my work.

I'm oddly,almost serenely calm about the whole thing, when I suppose I should be scared. I must be really bothering someone, which perhaps means I'm close to affecting the kind of "hope and change" that will put some folks behind bars where they belong.