It all started when we were driving home from a Christmas visit to my dad’s family in Tennessee.  We had gotten lots of cool presents and had fun with my dad’s relatives, but now it was time to go back to Viroqua.  Along the way, we stopped at some location I don’t remember to eat lunch at a Cracker Barrel restaurant.  While we waited for our food, I tried--and failed--to figure out some kind of triangular peg game that they had there.  I got so frustrated that I threw the game at a deer head mounted on the wall behind me.  The head was knocked off, and it snagged on a gun hanging beneath it, taking it down, too.  Firing as its butt fell, the gun shot a bullet through a string on which a scythe, a farm tool with a long handle and curved blade used for cutting wheat, hung from the ceiling in an adjacent general store.  The scythe swung down from the other string still holding it and smashed several gum ball jars on a nearby shelf.  An employee came out of the bathroom and accidentally slipped on the gum balls rolling around on the floor.  Trying to save himself, he grabbed another shelf and ended up pulling it off the wall, bringing a few dozen glass soda bottles crashing to the floor. 

It didn’t take long to realize that I would be in hot water, and sure enough, the furious restaurant manager, red-faced and fuming, ran into the eating area.  He screamed, “All right, who’s responsible for this mess?” 
When other patrons pointed at me, the manager ran for us.  We bolted, and he turned over our table to get to us, knocking over the kerosene lamp on top.  All of the kerosene caught fire and ignited coats on a nearby coat stand.  The fire then spread to an antique wooden telephone, which burned up and fell on a fire extinguisher, knocking it to the floor as well.  The fire extinguisher’s nozzle broke, and fire retardant gushed everywhere, covering everyone nearby, including the manager.  Fuming, he grabbed a long, metal, shovel-like tool next to the fireplace and ran after us with it.  For some reason, he threw it at us, maybe hoping to slow us down; instead, his move let us escape when the tool smashed a nearby window that we proceeded to exit the building through.  We all high-tailed it for the car, got in, and sped off.  I guess the restaurant manager called the cops on us after we fled the scene of the crime, because it wasn’t long before we heard police sirens behind us.

Seeing the police cruisers zeroing in on us in the rear-view mirror, my dad floored the accelerator.  It was just like any old car chase, except that my only crime was being dumb enough to start a chain of destruction at a restaurant.  The radio was on, and of all the songs that could have been playing, it just had to be “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC. 
“How fitting,” I remarked.  Because that’s what we were on now, and I knew we wouldn’t be finding salvation anytime soon.  The cop cars were getting closer and closer, and we had to weave in and out of traffic to shake them off.  Backup units arrived, doubling the number of vehicles chasing us.  This went on for many minutes.  Finally, we tried to outmaneuver them by taking a detour on a small country road, but to our shock, there was yet another car parked across the road, presumably to block us.  A shotgun-toting officer stood outside, ready for a confrontation.  With police vehicles in front of and behind us, there was only one thing to do.  My dad swerved off the road and into a nearby field.  I heard a gunshot and a brief but noticeable popping sound in the back of the car.  I looked around to see if anyone was hurt; everyone seemed okay, and I didn’t see any blood, so I wasn’t exactly sure what had been hit, although I assumed that the shot was fired by the officer with the shotgun.  I also noticed that the ride was suddenly very bumpy, although we were riding across a field, so that only made sense.  The police cars started lagging behind, ill-suited to the terrain, and we lost them shortly after we rolled back onto the highway.

That night, we stopped to sleep at the Holiday Inn.  We went to the back of the car to get what we needed for the night, noticing that one of the rear tires was mutilated.  The part of the body above and around it was also riddled with holes that looked like they had been made by a shotgun blast.  We opened the back, and snack foods spilled out.  Suddenly, we realized what had happened.  When the officer had shot our car--presumably with the intention of popping our tire, which he had accomplished even though it didn’t stop us--some of the shot pellets had penetrated the body of the car and hit snack food bags and soda cans stashed back there, causing them to burst.  The snack foods were a mess, but the soda was even worse, having soaked into the upholstery after some of the cans were punctured.  Now, we would be forced to ride around in a car that smelled of artificial cheese flavoring and flat, sickly-sweet root beer--and that was only assuming that we weren’t taken into custody before we could get back on the road.  After cleaning out the spilled food, we collected our supplies for the night and went into the hotel.

Miraculously, the receptionist did not know we were on the lam when my parents checked in.  We went through the hall to where our room was, and I tapped on a door to indicate which room was ours--or so I thought.  Unfortunately, I had chosen the room next to ours, and before I could realize my mistake, the door opened to reveal to a big, scary man with a beard and a bald head. 
“SERIOUSLY?” he yelled.  “DID YOU REALLY THINK YOU COULD JUST INTERRUPT MY PRIVACY LIKE THAT?” 
“Oh, I’m sorry, sir,” I stammered in a meek voice, “I didn’t know this was your room.  I thought this was our room.”  I quickly walked back a few steps, afraid of what he’d do to me.
“WELL, CHECK THE NUMBER FIRST!” he fumed.  My dad then had to explain to the guy that I really had made a mistake and that our room was next to his, and when the man shut his door, my dad reprimanded me for tapping on the wrong door.

The next day, we went to eat breakfast downstairs in the hotel.  They had a pancake machine that I wanted to use to make pancakes, but I didn’t know how it worked.  After reading the directions, I pressed the start button, but I wasn’t sure if it had registered, so I pressed it four more times.  Only then did I realize that it had registered each time, and each time it entered a command to make two pancakes, so I had accidentally told it to make ten pancakes--and I didn’t know how to cancel my request!  All I could do was wait for the machine to churn out the first two pancakes and then put a plate under the end of the little conveyor belt to catch the rest.  I took many other items to eat as well, but before I was even half done, my parents had to take us to get our things and leave before the police caught up.  By the time we left the hotel, the machine, conveyor belt inching along, was still finishing my order.

We left just in time, too, because as we were pulling out, police cars came into view--and this time there were even more of them than before.  We sped down the highway in a recreation of the previous day’s pursuit, and after a few hours, my dad realized there was only one way to lose them: by taking another detour, this time through Chicago.  It worked because of the heavy traffic that prevented the police from getting to us, but there was only one problem: we were stuck, too.  The traffic jam we were in stretched for miles both in front of and behind us, and it lasted so long that my sisters and I even got tired of napping.  Three hours and countless complaints later, we were driving out the other side of the city, ready to endure the last leg of our journey.

As we neared Viroqua, the authorities ambushed us once again, and this time, it was the largest group of police we had ever seen.  Cops from different cities chased us in small cars, SUV’s, and helicopters.  My dad tried using the same maneuvers from yesterday and earlier that day to get them off our tail, but it was more difficult because there were so many cars this time, and they had air support.  We drove off the road to evade them, jostling and bouncing our way through fields, pastures, creeks, wooded areas, and the local landscaping company.  The vehicles crashed, got stuck, or were unable to continue any further until only the helicopters were chasing us.  A police sniper riding in one chopper took out his rifle, scoped one of our tires, and put a bullet in it; the tire blew, but we still kept going.  We drove through town so that the helicopters would lose us, and sure enough, they turned away, presumably to avoid hitting buildings and telephone wires.  We made a loop around and crawled back through the nearby fields until the gas tank ran on empty.  We finally made it to our house, but then the police helicopters caught up with us anyway.

We couldn’t believe it.  All this effort, and we were beaten nonetheless.  Now we really were done for.  With nowhere else to go and nowhere to hide, we just let the police come and end it all by taking us into custody.  We eventually had to pay a huge fine for all the damage we had done, and I had to contribute to a lot of it because the Cracker Barrel incident, the disaster that started it all, was my fault.  Now I am in juvie, and I will still have to make enough money to pay off my share of the fine for a while.  The lesson we all learned was: don’t think you can impulsively commit acts of stupidity and get away with it, or you will be more sorry than you could ever imagine.