Epic songs, aren’t they? I had a funny? (or not lol) story about that Judas song. It cost me literally shy of $400 on a speeding ticket.
Long story short, it was a Sunday morning on an empty highway; everybody was in Church, and I was having a very rare great mood after a serious traumatic experience and a period of deep sadness. Took my old 86 NYorker (first car I ever had, loved everything about it) for a ride, it was a gorgeous day and I was feeling on top of the world listening to Freewheel Burning. Hauling my happy ass through the hwy, I missed the reduced speed sign as I was entering town limits. Sure enough, the cop car was right there, pulled me over and of course got me a ticket and a citation to go to Court. So to Court I went.
The Judge was this elderly gentleman, all dressed up in his Judge garb, serious and composed as you’d expect him to be. So he reads the charges and asks me how I’d plead, I told him: “Guilty as a kid caught red handed in the cookie jar, Your Honor”. Told him I wasn’t there to get away from it, but more so to ask the Court if I could pay the ticket in a few installments, since I knew it was going to be a salty matter. He asked me what happened, and I told him the whole truth: that I had been going through a very trying period in my personal life, and that day was a very bright one for some reason, plus Judas Priest helped to put me in such good mood. He stops for a second, looks at me and goes, with this charming look of nostalgia: “Ahhhh, Judas Priest, that explains everything”. I was dumbfounded, and asked him: “Do you really know Judas Priest, Your Honor?” And he goes: “Well, believe it or not, I do!” And of course all of us in his Court started laughing
I asked to let me pay the ticket in 4 installments of $100 each, and he even said: “Look, just in case, I’m going to order installments of $75, so you don’t get very overwhelmed; if you can pay more, good for you, you finish paying earlier; but if you can’t, you can do 75 at a time”.
God bless his heart!
