Or glove box, or jockey box, or whatever you call it where you live.

A few days ago I told the story of how I was pulled over for going 1/2 mile over the speed limit when I was sixteen.

memory39 commented that the story of why the bullets were in the glove compartment also needed to be addressed.

Well, frankly a good, detailed story explaining that verges on novel length, so we'll leave it at this:

I came from a small area where a lot of weird stuff happened regularly and not a lot of anyone with authority was doing much of anything to stop it. And, more often than not, those who should do something about it were involved.

How about this for an explanation: the area where I grew up once appeared on an expisode of The X-Files and the story wasn't that far from the truth.

Some of the citizens worked to change who was in charge in the hopes that some of the weird stuff would stop. It's not cool when your cousin has been savagely murdered in her home because she figured out that her boss is running drugs and other bizarre, horrifying things out of his sprinkler shop and the authorities attempt to say she was murdered because she was the one running the drugs. (The more interesting merchandise and activities aren't mentioned.)

So, new people were eventually elected after a long fight, but some of the old ones remained.

My dad was appointed as an assistant county coroner at this time because he was smart, aware of what was going on, didn't want it to happen anymore, and he could be trusted. Use your imagination as to why an assistant county coroner in a weird small town would need to know about bizarre local activities and would need to be trustworthy. It'll give you weird dreams.

Because of the above qualities, the local authorities (including the sheriff) would call on my dad to accompany them when poking around.

So, that's the quick and easy version of why the sheriff's big bullets were in my car and why my dad had a concealed weapons permit.